This is an interesting discussion to me because it kind of boils down to who needs who more: sponsors or afillates? It seems like the sponsors that do not auto approve have weighed in here, but that's a tiny fraction of all the adult sponsors out there. I've researched this and out of about 100 adult sponsors I looked at, only about 15 required a pre-approval. Does this mean that auto-approvals are best because the majority of sponsors (and some of the largest ones) offer them? I don't know... it's just an observation.

For the few sites that require auto-approval, you absolutely have every right to do this and your reasons certainly make sense to you.

I think the point I was trying to make is that the sites that require pre-approval are looking at this from a "what's easiest and best for me" point of view, where the sites that don't require pre-approval are looking at it more from a "what's easiest and best for my prospective affiliate" point of view.

When you're in business you have to make a choice on what kind of customer service you provide and then live with that decision and the fact that your competitors may be doing it another way. For example, most sponsors have made the decison that making prospective affiliates wait is apparently not good customer service, while others like those who have spoken here feel that asking people to wait 12 hours or so is not a problem. Two different ways of approaching the sponsor-affiliate sign up, although here's something else to consider: the sponsors who provide auto-approval will eventually find out which of their affiliates are high quality and which are frauds. The sponsors that do not pre-approve will never know which high quality affiliates did not sign up because these affiliates simply decided to spend their time signing up with sponsors who welcomed their efforts from the very beginning.

In any event, it sounds like the people here who require pre-approval have thought this through and made the decision that works for them, so more power to 'em!