Affiliate programs and what to watch out for

Here's a very important post to note that not all affiliate programs are created equal, and you should be very careful about where you send your valuable traffic to !
Once my poker page moved up in the Google SERPS, I had several companies contact me, wanting to work with me. Offers from at least 4 different sites within a week period ! Google is obviously not the only one who noticed me ...
So did I jump up and add all these offers to my page ? Hell no ... some of them sounded slightly dodgy, and since I work in IT security, I'm a little paranoid by nature. I verified if they are companies that others have worked with succesfully and found that 1 in particular was not to be trusted 'PokerNetOnline' has a very bad reputation on the web (google it). So i emailed them back to let them know about what I had found and they (of course) replied that this was a thing of the past .. they had fired the old affiliate manager and were back to doing honest business. Basically, their old affiliate manager was not paying the affiliates as much as they should, putting the remainder of the cash in his own pocket. I'm not sure what to believe now, but shortly after this I received an email from leetpoker.com, the email was INDENTICAL to the PNo one... very fishy indeed !!
So I have decided to wait with implementing their (very attractive) offers on my page until I have heard from other people in the bizniz that they are safe to work with.

I did decide to work with 'TheNation Traffic', an israeli company promoting a europartners brand 'Tony-G poker'... All seemed well, and I sent them about 30 new players and am expecting a $300 payout from them for this. Then some jewish holidays hit the calendar and my contact dropped of the map !! Those holidays are over for 2 days already and have not heard back from him :(

I hope to hear from him soon and will let you all know if thenationtraffic is to be trusted or not.