It is sort of like SEO: it gets a bad rap from a contingent of the market who perpetuate abuses. This man, for example, made hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales by facilitating theft. (There is no other way to describe rebilling if you understand what the game is.)
"For me, the biggest money makers.....2008, 2009 were rebill offers"
He stole money. If you don't know what rebill means look it up.
Example of rebill:
10 years ago I bought a computer from Best Buy and got free internet from AOL for 6 months. I never used it. After 6 months AOL started billing me. Somewhere in the fine print it mentioned they would start billing me automatically after 6 months.
Many rebillers don't have contact info so cancelling is difficult.
They are, but mainly because banks are revoking merchant accounts of those who use rebills and have high chargeback levels. The FTC, banks, and Google are all cracking down on shady affiliate stuff right now. As you said, the next few years should be interesting.
