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One of the things that you will often hear me say here ... and in other places ... is that the principles of selling are the same regardless of what you're selling. Whether you're selling a packet of shoelaces or a million dollar car the basics remain the same.

You need to engage the customer; you need to show the customer what the benefits of owning your product will be for the them and you need to convince him that in buying from you ... or the merchant/sponsor you're representing ... he's dealing with a reputable and trustworthy business that will deliver what you said they would.

Sadly, achieving that last point can be quite difficult when you're selling an adult product. Over the years we've destroyed the trust the market place once had in what we sell. We've offered them the world and delivered nothing; we've guaranteed that their credit card details would be safe with us and then ripped them off month after month even though they tried to cancel.

And we've done it so often and over so many years that now the market place doesn't trust us and making sales is getting harder and harder. Even when we're trying to offer them a site that gives great value for money and that genuinely does treat them like royalty they don't believe us and they don't trust us enough to make a purchase.

As I said a moment ago, that's taken us years to achieve that low-point in our industry but there's a mainstream industry that has achieved the same dismal reputation in a far shorter time. Instead of learning from our experience this industry has managed to destroy their reputation in a relatively short period of time and now the players in that industry are finding it hard to make sales.

I hadn't realized that things had got so bad for this particular industry. Here in Australia we don't have the same level of competition and so we haven't seen the same marketing frenzy that appears to have taken place in the United States. It wasn't until I was reading Seth Godin's blog yesterday that I found out just how low the reputation of the players in the cell phone industry has sunk.

Seth suggests that the cell phone industry suffers from broken promises, bad attitude and poor customer service. Evidently things are so bad in the United States that even when a good cell phone provider comes along and offers a high standard of service people are slow to take up the offer. Perhaps the consumers have had their fingers burnt one time too many and now they just don't believe a great offer when it's presented to them. Instead of jumping in and grabbing the offer with both hands the consumers are just waiting for the bait and switch to happen.

Funny, that tends to sound a little like our industry doesn't it?

Site after site comes out offering a great experience for the surfer and, while they may contain fresh content they're nothing more than copies of sites that were successful last year. Old sites that haven't been updated in ages and should have been retired years ago continue to be presented as something outstanding and anyone suckered in by the advertising suddenly find that the members' area hasn't been touched since 2004. And before you think I'm exaggerating here let me tell you that I saw the inside of two sites like that just yesterday.

And when members complain that they haven't received what they paid for they're laughed at and they're complaints are ignored. Is it any wonder that making sales in this industry is becoming such a challenge and that more and more surfers are heading for review sites so that they can get some idea of what the inside of a site actually looks like?

Of course there are a lot of affiliate marketers who couldn't care less what experience the sites that they're promoting give to the members they send. They see that they owe nothing to the surfers and are only there to make a quick buck from every surfer they can convince to join.

That approach may certainly appeal to you because it's fast money and you don't have to work all that hard to make your sales but there is a down side that you should consider. If you convince a surfer to join a site that isn't worth joining then he's never going to trust you again.

Once again, that's not going to bother you if you're in for the quick buck but these days we've gone beyond the point where there are an unlimited number of people hooking up to the Internet for the first time. These days we're working with people who have been around the block a few times and that means that chasing the quick buck is becoming harder and harder.

In fact those who do chase the quick buck are beginning to fall by the wayside because the number of sales they're making is beginning to drop. At the same time those who are prepared to do the extra work to establish a level of trust with the surfer and market sites that are worth joining are beginning to see an increase in their income levels.

So perhaps there's a lesson there for the cell phone industry to learn ... and for you to learn too - if it's not too late.