microlinx - 12:50 pm on Sep 27, 2006 (gmt 0)

I have been working online since 1996 and have been a member of cj, linkshare, amazon, clixgalore, shareasale, you name it...
I send a large amount of traffic to these sites, and most sites offer products and services and probably have a good conversion rate.
However, I find that no matter how much traffic (even highly targeted traffic) I sent using their affiliate links, my commissions are flat.
The exception was a peroid of about 3 weeks a month or two ago, where the flood gates opened up! I made about $1500 in commissions in 3 weeks, but as suddenly has it started, it stopped.

I have a customer database of about 10,000 who have bought from my site and to whom I occasionally advertise sale items from my affiliates. Last weeks I sent out a newsletter and had about 2000 responses to my affiliate links, but zero sales. That seems odd.

My bottom line questions are this, dumb as they may be:
Are affiliate programs even worth the time & effort?
Are these programs "rigged" to deny credit for any reason?
Is anyone having any luck with affiliate programs or are these simply designed to drive traffic and deny credit for your work?

TIA

[edited by: eljefe3 at 2:20 am (utc) on Sep. 28, 2006]