Originally Posted by DigitalPimp

Do you know of a dirty little secret that one or more affiliate programs use that results in decreased affiliate income? If so, post it here, no company names needed. I'll start with one that has always bugged me and is done by practically every program.

No email or even news posted at their site regarding discontinued or otherwise inactive sites. Programs will often just quietly remove the link code from the linking page. The affiliate link code may just no longer work or if you are lucky redirect the traffic to another site in their network but unfortunately often the site is not in their network and thus you get no credit. If you got PPC ads running for the site and you do not keep on top of this, you could be buying advertising for the site with the traffic all getting redirected to a site outside their network for their profit.