Why are referrals such a debacle?

The number of ads available is ridiculously small

[casua]

In some main stream categories, I see only 3 (yes, three) ads available.

Did scammers hoping to obtain absolutely free traffic (as early adopters) discourage publishers from trying CPA again? That would cause honest advertisers to discover that there are no sites to show CPA ads on. An endless harmful "loop".

[koan]

Referrals didn't completely work out for me because of the lack of advertisers for my topic, but also because the main reason I would be using them is to actually select the advertisers I wanted, as opposed to contextual ads, which would have been a wonderful complement to normal adsense ads. Now that they're mixing it all together (even when you select "show only my ads"), and when I saw that the initial conversions were worth 2 cents, I just decided not to be a beta tester anymore and wait for the whole thing to mature.

[Scurramunga]

Did scammers hoping to obtain absolutely free traffic (as early adopters) discourage publishers from trying CPA again?

In my case; YES