Originally Posted by signupdamnit

Yes. Pretty much. See the tubes took most of the traffic from the affiliates. Google punishes for affiliate links and rewards for long TOS from large movies so the affiliates with their 30 second legal clips got screwed. So the sponsor loses 50% or whatever of their affiliate business and then is hit with reduced revenues overall. So they get desperate. They see 'Scumbag tube' can send them 10,000 hits potentially a day by putting their videos out there along with a few sales so they want to work with them to stay alive. It's a nice short term solution anyway and you gotta do what you gotta do.

The paysite affiliate has largely left. Traffic is harder to get. Ctr is radically reduced. Retention for revshare is way down. You are crippled with using only sponsor content where the sponsor is even still giving it out to you. It usually doesn't make any sense to work with .75% ctr and 1:5,000 ratios when there are other options. It's understandable that sponsors are looking for other sources because most paysite affiliates are long gone.

This industry isn't very good about looking for the long term though. It usually is about the "quick buck"....and let's admit it. It shows.