No, parasitic is accurate for most affiliate sites. The majority are content mills who are better at SEO than the retailers. People google "best foobarbaz" when doing christmas shopping and end up at an affiliate content mill. If the affiliate content mill didn't exist, google would have taken them straight to amazon. This is highly evident by the numbers shared in affiliate forums - 90% of annual revenue often comes from November and December. (If you have useful content and are appreciated by the community, this does not happen.)
Then there are blogs who happen to use affiliate links. These guys are content creators who don't want to show ads. If you go this route you have to be careful to avoid becoming (or looking like) a content mill. But generally these are people doing good, tasteful work and only writing about products they've actually bought and put through the wringer.
Finally, in distant third, are the companies affiliating because they want to fix the online shopping experience but don't have the capital to compete directly. Camelcamelcamel is the best example of this. My own site is also a fair example.
There are many shades of gray in the affiliate spectrum. It mostly comes down to how many "best practices" (aka dark patterns, like making all images go to affiliate links instead of larger versions) you choose to use. If someone says their operation is parasitic, they are probably right.
Then there are blogs who happen to use affiliate links. These guys are content creators who don't want to show ads. If you go this route you have to be careful to avoid becoming (or looking like) a content mill. But generally these are people doing good, tasteful work and only writing about products they've actually bought and put through the wringer.
Finally, in distant third, are the companies affiliating because they want to fix the online shopping experience but don't have the capital to compete directly. Camelcamelcamel is the best example of this. My own site is also a fair example.
There are many shades of gray in the affiliate spectrum. It mostly comes down to how many "best practices" (aka dark patterns, like making all images go to affiliate links instead of larger versions) you choose to use. If someone says their operation is parasitic, they are probably right.