Originally Posted by signupdamnit

It's not to my advantage as an affiliate at all if your url is on the content and the visitor types in the url without clicking my affiliate link. That means I won't get any credit for the sale. But as the sponsor you still get revenue from that visitor which I really sent. The advantage is to you only. If the visitor does that it means you get my share too.

I'm not talking about "bad connections". I'm talking about bad affiliate sales tracking and cases where visitors delete cookies for privacy reasons and things like that. This number only increases every year. It has never decreased. As a sponsor you still get revenue from those visitors as long as your biller approves them. As an affiliate I usually get nothing. The situation is made worse by ad blocking. It means my affiliate banner could get blocked while only the content is shown conveniently with your url or brand name in big letters for the surfer to google. Sure if I am smart I would use regular links and such which do not get ad blocked to counter that but it's still something which can only work against me. Up to 30% of porn surfers are using some type of ad block.

I don't care if the sponsor credits random affiliates for type in sales. As long as they aren't taking them from me or other webmasters. In fact I remember one sponsor who used to claim years ago (when affiliates were the main means of promotion) that he would credit every sale which was not tied to an affiliate to a random affiliate. Why would that bother me? What would piss me off is shaving me so that you can pay more to others (such as the "bros" who own the big tubes).

Unless you just misunderstood me or I conveyed myself poorly you really don't seem to understand how affiliates think. Either that or you are being purposely naive or something. I don't know. I guess you aren't primarily an affiliate so it's no wonder you see it from a sponsor perspective.