Jayman:
We know your plight well. Seems like contests draw out every so-called webmaster in the universe and then they do diddly to promote you. We've found, though, that taking a couple extra steps tend to trim teh fat, so to speak.
1) Screen affiliates (if you don't already) as they join. Ensure that they at least have an operational site, that the site belongs to them and they are in legal compliance. Alot of you will scoff at this, but with regs as they are, sponsors are being held responsible for their affiliate's marketing methods. This means if affiliate A spams, fails to display 2257 info or has shady keywords (lolita, etc) you could (and probably would) feel some processing strain or even legal grief as a result.
2) Get to know your affiliates (I think someone said "its all in the contacts), stay in touch with them and make sure they have all they need to promote you.
3) Increase commission (if you've the budget, of course) for those higher performing affiliates. This may (has in some instances) increased the incentive for affiliates to work harder.
4) Drop the dead weight. Make a provisioin in the agreement for your affiliate program that states they must send x amount of traffic to remain active and remove those below this level. Perhaps send an email upon removal that entices them to rejoin when they are in a better position to promote your program.
I'm sure alot of you already know this or have tried at least one if not all of the above; including Jayman.
BUt I thought I'd throw these out there in case there is something in there you haven't considered yet.
Good luck getting those lazy suckers to perform!
