So, there is either some serious stat shaving going on which has lulled affiliates into accepting these numbers, or the big boys are just doing something magical to get the ROI.
Well shaving would explain why your conversion rates and average player worth or much lower than theirs. I dont think their doing anything magical to get a better ROI – if they were that good they wouldnt need us.
Say your average player worth is $400, but theirs is the $1000 that would mean their shaving on average $600 per player. Its just too easy for them to say “well you didnt do that well this month because of credit card rejections” or “you didnt do very good because of the threat of an emminent ban” or “you had 7 deposits but 4 are winning, 1 isnt playing, 1 charged back, and the other was a duplicate signup.”
I think some programs use an affiliate quota … that is unless you are sending X amount of traffic and X amount of dollars you will see nothing at all.
So after say 6 months of making nothing -they can give you 4 – 5 hundred dollars and you will think WOW Im doing great. After another 6 months they bump you up to say 1 -2 thousand dollars and your really happy now, but all along you were producing average players worth $1000 – now that would suck!
Selective Shaving yet another conspiracy theory sparked by bad months – LOL!
As for the click death theory I think this does go on, but not to the extent of controlling whats going on with the entire traffic scheme.