Brian, I think it has a lot to do with the tone of the post that started this thread -
Is that really only worth 50% compared to the effort of an affiliate who may or may not have done anything more than just throw up a banner on their site and happened to send a surfer your way?
You list how much work the sponsor does, then tell us that in your view, affiliates don't do much more than "throw up a banner on their site". You imply that affiliates just get lucky, getting sales that you would have made anyway, simply because a surfer "happened to click" their ref code.

I think that an affiliate that does nothing more than put up a page somewhere and slap you banner on it won't be making any sales. No revenue for you or for him. It takes more work than that. It takes planning and it sometimes takes trial and error to see which kind of traffic a certain sponsor converts best with. It takes a lot of effort to actually generate sales and it takes time to build up the right SE traffic too.

What offended me was the portrayal of sponsors vs. affiliates in the lines where sponsors are hard working people, and affiliates are a bunch of lazy spoiled brats who expect to get something for nothing. Yes, Lee, I know that affiliate boards are full of idiots who think they can get something for very little work, who expect sponsors to spoonfeed and baby sit them. I think that if you read those boards in-depth, you'll see that they get scolded by the serious people in the biz (affiliates, no less) that keep telling them this is about hard work, for the long term. How many are these in terms of percentage? I'm not sure. I do know that even if only 5% are serious hard-working webmasters, you may consider being more careful in making generalizations, because it's likely that those hard-working 5% may be the ones reading your posts...

I already said before in this thread, by all means, raise the threshhold and cut out the people that think sponsors should provide them with every tool on the planet, wasting everyone's time, and creating competition for me Just do it in a fair manner, let them know in advance that you have specific requirements and work with the ones that are serious. Moreoever, once they have links up to your program, just leave it. Why? well, this brings me to the next point, which addresses Brian's thoughts in the very first post in this thread.

When an affiliate promotes a sponsor, they help brand that sponsor, even without generating a sale. For example, I have posts on my college blog right now, promoting Corbin Fisher. I am targeting a certain search phrase with a post, say for example, "college hunks by the pool". I optimize my page for that term, hoping to get those people who may be searching for "college hunks by the pool" on Google (not now, maybe six months from now). These people may or may not know about the Corbin Fisher site. I know it seems to you at this point that everyone does, but hey, I didn't know the names of most of the porn sites I am promoting (and I'm not talking gay sites). Anyway, someone searches for "college hunks by the pool" and gets to my page, because I have put time and work into optimizing the page, buliding up links etc. Or maybe they become regulars on my blog, and get back, doesn't matter. It's traffic that I worked to bring in. They read the post about the Corbin Fisher site. Will they make a purchase? Some may, hopefully. Most won't. They will move on elsewhere on the net. But... and here's my point, they were exposed to your brand name. They may later just type in corbinfisher.com, into their browser, long after my cookie expires. It may take reading 5 or 10 posts made by me and by other affiliates on blogs. It may take seeing your site promoted on other affilaites's sites, on galleries or whatever. It creates brand recognition. And we get paid nothing for it. Zilch. Eventually, they may generate a sale that goes to Corbin Fisher, either shared with one lucky affiliate or not.

You know, on one of my mainstream sites, a large site in its field with lots of very targeted traffic, I work with advertisers directly. Many offer affiliation programs, but I almost always refuse. I only sell CPM advertising, where they pay just to have their ad on my site. I do this because I feel that even if I don't generate any sales for them at that point, they are still getting something for their money. They are getting the branding effect. My visitors have that advertiser's name, URL, logo, product, whatever, branded into their mind, time and time again. Someday they may make a purchase, or tell their friends about it. The advertiser gets his value worth for the ad, which is much higher than a percentage per a certain sale made during the time of the campaign.

So, something to keep in mind. The affiliates that registered with you and never put up your links, they're dead driftwood on your db, I don't think it would even matter to them to be deleted. But affiliates that did put up links, sent you traffic, even if it didn't convert, they helped promote your site and brand it. If you were to pay them CPM for displaying your banner, or even CPC per click, rather than pay them per sale, you would owe them money by now.