Has the whole idea of affiliation kind of been dying out recently?

You probably know what I mean, but I mean affiliation by the 'contact site in same topic, check two page list of requirements and add links to each site to the other site' way that many free forums and fan sites use as a traffic builder. Not the paid links thing, which is also to an extent becoming deader than disco.

But anyone else think this seems to be a less common thing nowadays for forums and websites? It seems to be getting less and less common, now rather few websites actually even have pages for affiliates or links or what not, and it seems SEO in general may have played a role in killing the idea off. You know, when people only treated it like a cheap way to get page rank rather than actually using it to promote things happening on other sites or actually help anyone running them.

Has the whole concept gone the same way as link directories, topsites and webrings?

 

I was never a fan of this because no one ever clicked on them.