When merchant collects emails on their sales page to send free reports, is that a way to cut the affiliate out of the equation or will we still get credit for eventual sales?
Well I think it's always better to promote products that go straight to the order page instead of capturing emails. IMO
I think he meant OPT-IN forms on the sales page - not the actual squeeze pages... Anyways, the free report does not eliminate affiliate's commission, in fact it makes more commissions for the affiliates. If you take Clickbank, their cookies is good for 60 days. So if someone comes to the page and decided to not buy - you will not get the commission, since there is no sale. However, if the same customer opts-in for a free report, he will keep receiving e-mails from the publisher and might decided to finally BUY the product a month later... Your affiliate cookie is still present in the buyer's computer, so you still get the commission! I had many sales that had 0 hops - meaning they came from the opt-in list that publisher built