Will the affiliate model die this year ?

[Greg B]

Originally Posted by Mike AI

The affiliate marketing model has been around before the Internet, and will continue strong after - including porn.

However, cracking down on shady affiliates is certainly a trend. Supporting "needy" affiliates is many times not worth the money and effort.

The days of the free sites is coming to an end. 8 years ago there were many webmasters who made great livings running free websites. Today it is more and more difficult because the Search Engines have learned how to keep the traffic and $$ for themselves.

What Mike AI said.

In addition, it'll take just one or two affiliate programs to fuck up with an underage model to cause a major problem. It would be wise to really stay on top of which companies are ethical and not. Let's say Company 'A' does everything right and has 10,000 webmasters selling their shit. Then out of the clear blue it's found one of the hardcore models bullshitted about her age to get money to pay for her family's farm and all the checks and balances failed. Does that put the other 10,000 wemasters as well as the customers in danger? Could be if a prosecutor saw a cash cow and political edge. Would the fines be by the day for 'each' offense of a pic, banner, vid, link? There're enough greedy bastards out here who would push for it.

What about the actors with the girl? Are they in for it even though they trusted the company to keep the records straight? Has it happened before?

Giving someone something to sell for you is and always has been a good idea and profitable. It'll never die especially in this business. Niche-rarity will be the foundation. In some cases it's a win-win situation so why not?