IBG in 2005

Liars

I don't really keep historical data on the number of merchants and have only recently semi-automated the counting of merchants by territory.

Also the only way I know of easily knowing which merchants are closing is via the weekly AF newsletter, which tells affiliates which merchants have joined that week and which are closing.

If I had the time - which I don't, I'm afraid - I'd totally automate the process, store the history and compare successive runs to automatically keep track of which merchants were new and which ones had closed, etc.

Having said all that, there is a lot more to AF performance than the number of merchants, i.e. it's much better to have fewer quality/converting merchants than loads of underperforming ones diluting the performance.

Many merchants leave or are 'culled', hence the churn over time, but this is in effect good for the merchant 'gene pool', as it were, maximising the conversion rate and average revenue generation per merchant.

IMO the Alexa reach appears to be far more indicative of the overall rate of growth, or has anecdotally correlated quite closely with reported AF growth figures in the past anyway - despite all the caveats attached to it.