I’m afraid it must have been caught up in my spam filter and gotten deleted (that’s where I just found this one).

Sorry.

I posted a long response on here right after you posted this. Did you ever get it?

Thanks,

Jonathan

Does it mean they are inactive? No, it means they are finding what marketing venues work or doesn’t work for them. Remember, not all affiliates use English as their first language and penalizing them seems a bit harsh.

What is it costing you to have inactive affiliates anyway? You’re using an auto-responder to send out the same message to all of them, so how much is ‘not paying’ an inactive affiliate costing?

but affiliates are being spam by merchants for all the emails after signed up

There is a cost for being inactive and remain in the program

You have an interesting definition of Spam.

Anyhow, if you don’t wish to hear from a merchant after joining their affiliate program (personally, I wouldn’t want to work with a partner that refused to communicate with me), just opt-out from their e-mails.

but affiliates are being spam by merchants for all the emails after signed up

There is a cost for being inactive and remain in the program

You are missing one point about the approve/deny process — communication. I reach out to potential affilaites asking what they are up to before approval/deny. If they ignore my overtures, they are obviously people I don’t want. Simply relying upon the information that CJ and LinkShare or the other information that a network gives you would have led me to miss many, many top affiliates.