Is it just me, or do affiliate programs in general have a bad reputation right now. For what was once the golden child of e-commerce seems to have lost some of its luster. Now the hot channels are search, blogs, RSS feeds just to name a few – affiliate programs seem to be SOOOO 2001.

From someone who worked in affiliate marketing for about nine years, I think I have a pretty unique perspective on the issue. When I started in affiliate marketing I was working for site that was selling magazine subscriptions, and the idea behind our affiliate program was pretty simple.

If you had a site about sports, and we sell Sports Illustrated magazine – we would ask you to sell our magazine and receive commission. It was a perfect fit as it was based on the content of the affiliate site driving an audience, and the products that we are selling being a perfect fit for that audience. Very niche stuff we are talking about here. We were very successful from an ROI perspective and our affiliate program experience solid growth.

Somewhere affiliate marketing got away from this model and started driving sales at any cost. Affiliates bidding on branded terms on search engines, spyware, deal and discount sites, rebate sites, just to name a few.

Now that the big affiliate networks (admirably I might add) have cracked down on many unscrupulous affiliates and retailers are protecting their branded search words, affiliate revenue has been flat or dropping for many programs. I guess more accurately, it is easy to get started in affiliate marketing, but it is becoming difficult to sustain growth in a mature program.

It is my opinion that the affiliate industry needs to get back to its roots of matching content and the product for affiliate sites. With all of the changes in the industry and with so many other options for Internet users to do their shopping, I am not sure that the affiliate industry will ever return to its golden age. It is simply a matter of expectations. Even with all of the challenges, affiliate programs still drive revenue for many retailers – but it may never be the shining star that it once was.