Steve, I can offer up dismal stats from one month or another for just about every program out there.
I can offer up consistently dismal stats for programs that the professor is making more than a living with. Krystall can offer up superb stats for a program the professor can’t make peanuts with. It is all subjective and depends on you, your type of site, your type of traffic, whether you attract novices or seasoned players (obviously you can’t sell a five year old casino to a player who played it five years ago through another aff), whether you have one time or repeat visitors and many many other factors.
To assume that your personal experience with any given program would be identical to that of any novice affiliate is not only wrong, it is harmful to that affiliate. S/he will not have the same experience you do. As a matter of fact, that is one thing I learned the hard way a few years ago – that the programs my seniors did well with were not the ones I could do well with as a beginner, since most of the established players had already signed through these very senior affiliates and I would get diddly for sending them back to that program. The senior would get the benefit of my foolishness.
This happens to be a topic I feel strongly about – appropriate support of novices. And I have some strong opinions about it – and these are one of the reasons I sometimes don’t think kindly of another aff message board out there. And I know the porfessor shares that purpose – the appropriate support of novices. He too feels strongly about this.
Emailing them with subjective experiences to warn them off programs one personally has a beef with is not appropriate support. It may well deprive them of a decent source of income. I am very opposed to this.