Quote Originally Posted by pocoloco78 View Post
The smaller affiliates, who are not sending one sale in a week, might be selling 10 memberships to your competitor. You can't judge an affiliate on your own stats, as most affiliates have dozens of sponsors. Looking at my own situation; I make several sales a day with some sponsors, while there are sponsors I only make one sale a month with. Of course I send more traffic to the first category.
That's all well and good and of course happens. Certainly affiliates would have sponsors that perform much differently for them then others.

I think it behooves both the sponsor and affiliate, especially given circumstances the likes of which you outlined, for strategic partnerships to exist between sponsors and affiliates that do best for one another, as opposed to blanket policies existing regardless of performance.

I have zero problem whatsoever paying out 50% to our best performing affiliates (in fact, many earn commissions even higher than that). But I'm having a little trouble believing any and all affiliates are worthy of 50% commissions with any and all sponsors.

We see affiliate commissions and PPS amounts getting higher and higher, sometimes with insanely high payouts (especially in regards to PPS). This isn't a reflection, I don't feel, of that sponsor's impression of the value of those referring affiliates - as much as I think many sponsors would go out of their way to avoid admitting it. It's more a reflection, instead, of sponsors competing with one another for webmasters.

And oftentimes, that competition can end up burning their surfers at the expense of trying to appeal to webmasters above all else.