I am a newbie in this forum and start to learn IM for 2 months only. But I still like to share some observations in here. Hope it would be useful for some newbies. Many ppls (like me) would only rely on the highest rate (say $45/1000DLs) in order to determine to join which affiliate program. But the results are always disappointed. Why? Because your earning is not mostly relied on those highest rates but the rated download you can achieved and counted by the affiliate company. You may find out a very strange result after you play this PPD plans for a while. Why the view counts of your topic posted in those hot forum/FB/Twitter/Blog is really hot but at the end the results is always sxck?! Say maybe the view rate of your topic already exceed 10,000, but turn out your rated DL shown on report is only 50? Because of this issue, I decide to proceed a small test here to evaluate the effectiveness of rated downloads from 3 major PPD plans nowadays Bitshare(BS) vs Filesonic(FS) vs Duckload(DL) To proceed this test, I need one more tools to access how many ppls actually click those DL links and luckily I found AF this new plan and the rated result is as follows: AF count / Counted rate by those affiliate program 132 /BS=2 53 /DL=7 62 /FS=11 Same files uploaded to 3 different plan and now you can see the hugh difference!!! I put BS in the upper level of the topic which lead the AF hit rate is much higher than the others. But it cannot effectively turn into money as BS rated count is really low. In this case, FS is much much more better. This test is only run for one day only. I would update it tomorrow. Then we can see a more fair result in longer period of time. Wrap-up: highest rated stated by affiliated program is useless. Please consider their popularity, DL speed for free users, esp for rated counts by them. Some affiliate programs make a hugh discount on your rated count. if rated count is too low, no matter your file is very popular for your forum members, the results would not be good at the end. Besides, the DL speed granted to free user is too low which also let ppls would not like to download your files and let your earning decreases. This is my 1st thread to express my feelings about file storage affiliate programs. I hope my poor english is not scaring you Anyone like to read analysis report on duckload vs filesonic? I can make it later on Thanks for your reading and welcome for comment