Frankly I don't see why anyone much needs affiliates these days anyway. For search engines, yeah, I can see it. But for the rest of it, wouldn't it just be easier to deal directly with the traffic sources? If your affiliates are spending a couple hundred bucks for a link they are buying and they're profiting from that expense thru the payouts you send them, why not cut them out entirely and just buy the spots yourself.
Most of the tgps and link lists these days will list sponsor hosted galleries directly for the sponsors, and it's not like most sponsors can't afford to buy spots in bulk and still save money in the long run since they don't have to pay inflated commissions to affiliates.
And that's before you even calculate the fraud control costs, the administrative expenses, and the credits and chargebacks that even good affiliates are prone to causing.
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