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As someone who has been running a small niche review site for a long time (slightly longer than Doug I believe ;-) ) I think this is a great post and entirely true. I particularly like the point about how being honest is essential to the process, I've always thought that but struggled with some people who just can't understand it.
And further to that I'd like to stress that although affiliate programs are how we pay the bills that doesn't mean reviews are purely for the purpose of sending traffic to programs. I happily review sites with no affiliate programs at all under entirely the same criteria as those with programs. The goal is to build a site with great information for the consumer and you can't do that if you don't list all major choices, regardless of *their* business model (more and more in my niche are traffic building entirely through social without any aff program).
On the other hand I've had site owners amazed at the fact that I joined their aff program, I required them to link to me (because they asked for a review, otherwise I don't require it) - yet I still gave them a "bad review"! Well sorry, but I can't give a dishonest review which will damage my credibility. And besides, I concur with Doug that even bad reviews make sales (surfers are weird huh). The most I will do is if a review is going to be absolutely terrible is I'll suggest to the webmaster that I not post it and instead they get back to me in six months to see if things are better.
As for epassporte accounts - yikes! You're not kidding that's a problem. A few years ago I was drowning in checks, luckily CitiBank here was waving the fees for overseas checks but just the fiddling paperwork of recording and cashing them was getting out of control. Epassporte saved me there and I'm sad to see it go (though I do hope to get the few $K I have in vv back at some point!)
The cam business has consolidated enormously in the last few years though so if I go back to checks it'll be a smaller number, but I'm sticking with wire for the biggest sponsors.
Yours,
Hony
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