Why is being an affiliate so darn hard??

Last week I got an email from Adsense saying my application to be an affiliate had been approved -- something like 6 months after I turned it in! Ben uses that for his blog (http://whyruntothetardis.blogspot.com/) and his request was approved within days. The one affiliate ad I have (Craftsy) is there but the others I thought I had installed (amazon and a couple others) are not there. I have found a couple of new ones to add and guess I will just have to phone every single one and ask why their ad links aren't working for me.