By Purple Yoshi December 16, 2003 First and foremost, I would like to apologise to anyone whom I may offend, or quote without permission. I am only using your example to make a point, so please take no personal offense. It has come to my attention recently the great amount of importance placed on site statistics and hits. On many occasions in the past, Purple Yoshi's Page has been denied top affiliation status, or even affiliation itself due to my refusal to show the webmaster my average number of unique hits per day. Many sites require a certain number of hits from their affiliates to be listed on every page, or as a "top affiliate". I can understand where they are coming from on this issue. They want to make sure that their affiliate gets their site some hits as well as the other way around. However, how are the small sites supposed to get around if no popular sites will give them a chance? I would likely give affiliates at least a couple of hits, though because I don't tell them how many hits I get, I am robbed of a higher status. Another issue that is irking me is the praise placed on paid websites. Once in the past (and I'm not naming websites or names here), a friend I know online quipped, "(insert website) has been paid for, thereby making it a non-profit organisation. No matter how you look at it, PYP is still just a stupid fan page". My question is: What difference does it make if money is involved? Other sites have been given better treatement than PYP simply because they have paid for hosting, when the site is of equal or lesser quality to PYP. In addition, I have been denied affiliation because I have not paid for a domain address. How exactly does www.(url).com make a website so much better that it gets places on every page or on the "top affiliates" list. It is simply the URL, not the site itself! People should be less picky with their affiliates. The whole concept of website affiliation is so two websites get more site hits and traffic from each other. Every site deserves a chance, and all the bigshot websites were small and unpopular once too. They should show more consideration for those trying to find a place on the internet. For whatever reason, they have not put any money towards their websites, but that shouldn't change anything. Some of the best websites around are completely free. That's right, no hosting, OR "proffessional" domain. I find that the majority of webmasters can be reasonable. Often I have found that a website has changed their policy regarding affiliates domains and hits, but they keep PYP as their affiliate even though I will not share my hits with them. It all comes down to content. I put great effort in making my yoshi content the best on the internet, and I realised that if you have good enough information, people might be willing to bend their affiliate rules a little, and you can still get your site known around the internet. All in all, I try to make a statement by keeping my site hits to myself. It's not necessarily that I don't meet the requirements of a website, but that I don't find it important. I hope to pay for a domain one day, though whether a site is popular or not, whether they pay for their site or not, all websites deserve a chance.