Why have most affiliate forums died?

Yes, XBiz.net is open to affiliates.

oh no against the rules

Is the Xbiz forum not open to affiliates? I applied last year but was rejected...

Back when I was attending the Xbiz event in 2011, I was rejected a few times, despite having paid for tickets for the event.

This sums it up really well. Most of us who want to help usually end up being drowned out by Paul Markham type posters. For the new people coming into the industry, it's hard to tell the difference between actual webmasters and the trolls.

Most of you wanted help and sites were happy to give it. Because it was in their interest, today it's not. 99.99% of the traffic flows via the big Tubes, so doing deals with cuts out the need for affiliates. Most of the smaller and medium sites have gone, except in minor niches and you can't all survive on those, a lot of companies are doing their own promotions because there is no great skill in being an affiliate.

Since no one cared about the decline in porn content creators, don't expect any tears from us over your decline.

Adapt or die.

This sums it up really well. Most of us who want to help usually end up being drowned out by Paul Markham type posters. For the new people coming into the industry, it's hard to tell the difference between actual webmasters and the trolls.

Because the world is changing and the only way an affiliate manager is to buy traffic ... is sick

There are still affiliate managers around?

Fundamental changes in the business. Being "an affiliate" as a primary business model was always fraught; the power imbalances are too large, the opportunities for the affiliate to be screwed are too many. In a fast-growing highly-competitive era, this was balanced by competition for affiliate traffic, and program reputation (among affiliates, especially on boards) was important, which limited the scope for programs to grasp and steal. Once the growth and competition went away, in a world of declining margin, too many programs (not all by any means, but vast majority) came to see the affiliate percentage as an unwelcome cost. Perceived affiliate value declined, temptation to steal (because hard times) went way up. Result? Strong pressure on affiliates to diversify into other business models, and (for those of us who retained affiliation as part of our model) vastly reduced incentive to participate on boards, because their primary value (social and tech conversation aside) was to keep the programs honest. That's gone now. Nobody's honest unless that's their actual business ethic (somewhat rare) and even they don't care about affiliate boards because affiliates are a much smaller chunk of their revenue. All this vastly oversimplifies, but it explains a big chunk of the change, in my opinion.