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I have to smile sometimes when I read mainstream Webmaster blogs and boards. You don't have to be doing business or hanging out over there for too long before you realize that they really do look down their noses at those of us who work here in adult. And you only have to do business or hang out over there just a little longer to realize that mainstream is even more cut-throat and downright nasty than it is here in adult.

Late last year just how downright nasty and even dare I say dishonest some people in mainstream can be came to light on one of the elite search engine optimisation marketing boards. One contributor to a thread ... a female no less ... suggested that search engine marketers who really had their client's best interests in mind should do all in their power to white-ant the competition.

What she had in mind and what she seemed to admit that she did was to report her client's competitors' websites to Google for paid links ... whether they had them or not ... and to email or snail mail the owners of websites that linked to those competing sites suggesting or hinting that there was something wrong about those sites and that no one should link to them.

Now isn't that just a clear indication of the level of integrity that's out there in mainstream? And before you suggest that one comment on one board should not be taken as an indicator of the whole industry let me point out that none of the elite posters over there actually came back and suggested that such an approach was dishonest.

Yes that's mainstream for you folks ... they love to look all clean and pure but they're even more disgustingly corrupt than adult is. And their dirty little practices are helped along by Google; it was Google's idea to report paid links and of course people who don't have the skill levels to hit the top spots in the search engines by their own efforts are going to be tempted to achieve those rankings dishonestly when they get the opportunity.

Now I'm not saying that sort of behavior doesn't happen here in adult ... it probably does to some degree but it's certainly not seen as acceptable.

The most depressing day of the year
If I asked you to nominate the most depressing day of the year then I'm sure that, like me, many of us would point to some time around the end of January. For us, that's the time when sales are down because our potential customers are coming to terms with the credit card debt that they've run up over Christmas.

There's even a researcher in the United Kingdom who says that the third Monday in January is always the most depressing day of the year because of that credit card debt I mentioned, the weather and failed New Year's resolutions. Many of his peer disagree with him and search engine statistics don't help him much either.

According to some search engine statistics that Hitwise has pulled up the most depressing time of the year is usually around October and a look at Google Trends shows that searches for 'depression' tend to drop quite noticeably around the end of the year. Google Trends also shows that more people in Australia search for the term 'depression' than any other country although it's a quite popular term in the United States too.

From those figures in Google Trends it seems that Melbourne, here in Australia, has the most depressed people ... and that's quite understandable ... while in America Chicago generates the most searches for that term.

Now why should those figures be of interest to you? Think about it for a while and I'm sure you'll see where you can go when you understand how people are feeling at certain times of the year.

Actually depression is a very interesting subject and people can be depressed for any number of reasons other than credit card debt and the weather. Over-work can lead to depression and the lack of face-to-face contact with other people can lead to depression too. Do they sound familiar?

Yes, depression can be a major health problem for affiliate marketers so don't think it can't happen to you.

And now I'm off to do something about combating the over-work and lack of contact with real people that has been impacting on Steve lately. It's a public holiday here in Australia today and we're taking the day off to go sight-seeing. We've been here for over four years now and, while we've been north and south we've never gone inland so today we're heading west to do the tourist thing and not even think about work.