Originally Posted by TheDoc

Affiliates have never been safe, most aren't a real business and 98% of those fail so no reason to think at least 98% of the affiliates fail at some point. The 2% is who the rest of us fight over.

Affiliates create traffic flow. They reach into markets that the paysite could not reach into on it's own, a vast amount of them. This goes into porn traffic sources all the way into mainstream sources, bh traffic, mail, chat, piracy, and today the mobile Internet.

The paysite/program owner can't possibly tap into all these vast ranges of traffic sources. Yes, some programs can do some killer internal sales. But if you took away the affiliates, you would take away the traffic networks, trades, lots of keywords would be dead end searches, overall the entire traffic bubble would be smaller, which could only support a limited number of paysites/niches do to a lack of global brand reach being limited.

Right now, our industry needs more Affiliates.... not less, we have a demand for them. Programs can't get enough of them. Affiliates aren't going any place, anytime soon.