Links for Maxim magazine, JustBalls.com, a sports ball site, and several other Internet marketers also appeared on the site along with a mock test allowing visitors to test their girlfriends' sanity and message boards for frustrated boyfriends. As news of the site spread through the Internet and media, hits soared to 1.6 million per day according to its creator, Dallas resident Mark McElwain. And some Web surfers, outraged by the site's content, sent e-mails to the affiliate companies asking how they could align themselves with such a site. "We received a bunch of e-mails complaining about it," said Josh Worby, spokesman of JustBalls.com (www.justballs.com), whose company pulled its logo off the site this past Thursday. "We entirely disavow any relationship with this site and have the same level of outrage as everyone else." Moviefone and Sports Illustrated also sent e-mail to the site demanding their logos be removed. As of Sunday, only the Sports Illustrated logo remained.

The magazine's spokesman, Art Berke, said it was unclear how long it would take for the logo to disappear. In fact, the Psychoexgirlfriend incident coincided with Time Inc.'s planned phase out of its affiliate program all together, said company spokesman Peter Costiglio. Entertainment Weekly, People, Money and Sports Illustrated magazines, which were the only publications with affiliate programs at Time Inc, will end their affiliate programs "within the next two weeks." "Even though there were controls in place, we found it impossible to monitor all the sites that carried Time Inc. links and logos," he said. Indeed, the psychoexgirlfriend.com episode illustrates how quickly such "affiliate relationships" have proliferated on the Web - sometimes unwittingly linking giant corporations to questionable content.

Some Internet marketers say they have no idea how many Websites now contain links to their businesses, let alone what else is on those sites. At base, the relationships are all about exposure. The number of privately-run Websites - devoted to everything from wacky causes to beloved pets - has exploded in recent years, and their proprietors can theoretically earn revenue by posting commercial links on their sites. When Web surfers click through on a link and make a transaction, the original site gets a small percentage of the sale. Many marketers, meanwhile, have been eager to post their links widely across the Internet, hoping to bring more traffic to their sites.

The lure of 1.6 million hits per day, even at a Website like Psychoexgirlfriend.com, can be hard for companies to resist, says Christopher Todd, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix. "It's a trade-off. If your number one goal is revenue at all costs and you don't care where your brand is placed, you find situations like this. It's like throwing enough spaghetti against the wall and hoping something will stick," Mr Todd says.

Many Internet marketers rely on third-party businesses to manage affiliate relationships for them. Be Free Inc of Marlborough, Massachusetts, for example, manages Web site links for AOL Time Warner, JustBalls and some 300 other companies. Spokeswoman Jennifer Roy says some large corporations have as many as 100,000 to 500,000 affiliates; even smaller companies may have 1,000 to 10,000. Ms Roy said under a standard affiliate program, clients provide key words they want Be Free to screen for in applicant Websites.

Sites with sexual references, violence and discrimination of any kind are automatically rejected under most programs.

In some unique cases, applicants are automatically approved if key words don't match exactly. Clients do weekly or monthly checks to whittle out the unacceptable affiliates that slipped through. "Our program has some screening on certain sites that contain words like `guns,' `pornography,' `hate' and others," said Moviefone Spokeswoman Christine Winston. "Sometimes we run into new affiliates that just shouldn't be there." AOL Time Warner Spokeswoman Ann Brackbill said affiliate programs were just a "small part of what we do" among a host of other AOL marketing programs. Still, Mr McElwain says he's not troubled by some affiliates withdrawing their logos from his site. "If companies like JustBalls don't agree with our content, that's fine," he said. "We've had 10-12 affiliate requests a day from anyone ranging from stun-gun manufacturers to porn sites. But we're choosy too." Mr McElwain, whose site also peddles psychoexgirlfriend T-shirts and offers a contest to win a date with him, says he's targetingaffiliates that attract people between 18 and 34 years-old. He said the commercial links create potential for some cash on the side. Though he concedes he has not received any click-through revenue so far from the companies whose logos appeared on his site, he remains hopeful. "We're having a lot of click-through success.

People have e-mailed me saying they purchased a product at another Website just so they could support us," he said. Mr Todd of Jupiter Media Metrix said the small pot of revenue distributed for sites like Mr McElwain's is growing smaller. As the Internet economy settles, surviving companies with strong Internet sites are focusing less on quantity and more on quality partnerships with like-minded Websites, he says. They've also cut the click-through revenue they offer to affiliates from as much as 20 per cent per purchase a few years ago, to around five per cent.

-- The Wall Street Jounal