[Maxafi]

Paul,

I appreciate the points you make, and some are perfectly valid (IMO), however I would add the following;

- If as an affiliate your business is based around Landing Pages, Blogs or PPC then yes, commission drops are going to be a problem for you. In my opinion, the best way for such affiliates to react is to simply pull the campaigns and vote with your feet. I'm not convinced kicking up a fuss and 'ganging up' on a merchant it necessarily the right way to get a positive reaction. Pull the campaigns and hit their bottom line. Make them want your business.

- An affiliate whose activities work on a broader basis are effectively stuck with the commissions, because by not including them you're damaging your own business. Sure, you might not promote them as heavily, but you still have to include them.

The point I want to make is that if your goals are long-term, the priority has to be the site visitors - you have to give them the broadest range possible, even if that means you lose out on the odd occasion. You obviously don't want to make an overall loss though, so you need to find a way of trying to direct visitors to profitable avenues - you may, for example, put a banner for a competitor on a page covering Next, or compare the Next range against someone else. What you don't want it to find your visitors saying things like 'everyone knows x merchant has a better range of widgets, so why are they not here?'.

As I say, it comes down to your business model and goals at the end of the day. Build something with value, and merchants will want your business. If you don't add value, then why would a merchant want to bow to pressure?