As both an affiliate manager and a small part time affiliate, this is something that gets on my nerves, but at the same time I can see both sides.

My personal perspective is that Affiliates are the ones really caught out but networks also suffer as well, and the one benefit goes to the Merchant.

It’s not only annoying as I have to remove links I’ve put up, but frustrating as well, especially if i miss an email and look at my sites to realize one of the banners is dead. waste of both time and emotions.

From an affiliate managers perspective, its even worse, I have to contact all the affiliates, try and convince the client to give fair warning (usually they want to program to stop immediately), try and convince them to take in to account cookie periods and so forth. The knock on effect is i have to shut down the program, and notify all affiliates that the program is closed, then ensure that all the cookies are accounted for and check that affiliates have received information that the program is shut, worse still because I know how much affiliates find short notice program closures and inconvenience, I feel bad, for being the bearer of bad news.

Really I find that closing a program without notice is exploited by certain Merchants and they will use any excuse under the sun to get a program closed, its cheeky and pisses people off. As one affiliate put it:

“It is true, I get upset about short-termism and the embarrassing premature loss of an affiliate program …(snip)…  some places that get all the work in place and then run a slash-and-burn campaign for short-term gain.”

For any merchant reading this, if you do plan on running a short term campaign, let us know, as a network, we can accommodate this, and affiliates can be very accommodating, giving no notice is one of the worst things a merchant can do in relation to affiliate marketing and will potentially damage the working relationship between you and your affiliates.