At the time, AC was paying about $3 up front, plus pay-per-view incentives. And it has a good Google PR. So, I figured I could either be lazy and submit to AC or build my own site and spend a lot of time trying to get a decent PageRank. I chose lazy.
Just in the spirit of introducing you to other options: there exist people who already have profitable affiliate sites in the space who you could pitch on the idea of "bolt this onto your site and get X more inventory which will rank on the strength of your existing brand/trust/etc." I'd be thinking more in the five figure range than the $3 up front range.
