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And other idle thoughts
One of the biggest problems adult webmasters are facing these days is the resistance to making a purchase that consumers are now showing. Oddly enough it doesn't seem to be a problem in mainstream where sales are booming. In fact online sales over in mainstream are rising at an incredible rate while over here we're struggling.

Of course seasonal factors still apply in both adult and mainstream but overall we struggle for sales and mainstream rocks along setting new sales records every year. But why is that so? Our product is improving as new technology makes surfing and downloading a much faster experience than it was a few years ago but still we have this resistance.

Well undoubtedly adult webmasters have encouraged surfers to become wary of what we're offering. Even back in the days when all you had to do was show surfers a banner there were those who thought that it was good business practice to offer surfers the world and deliver very little.

And we've never really learned from our mistakes. There are still many affiliates out there who think that it's really smart and clever to get a sale regardless of what it might cost in trust and lost future sales. From their point of view it's better to push sites that offer the biggest commission even if it means the surfer is going to be ripped off.

Hell what do they care? There are plenty more surfers out there to rip off and all that really matters is how much coin goes into their pocket today. There's no thought for tomorrow, there's no thought for next week ... it's all about what they can make today.

When will those people ever learn? 'As ye sow so shall ye reap' might have been first written a long long time ago but it is still as applicable now as it was then. The Internet is not limitless, the people you screw today will still be around in the years to come and they remember. Oh sure, they may not know you and they may not relate your next site to the last one you used to rip them off but they will remember that they were ripped off and they won't buy the next time you and everyone else tries to sell them something.

So what are you going to do when you can't make money here in adult anymore?

Just recently one of the suppliers who made a lot of money selling operating systems to the computer shop that I'm involved in managed to slip us three bogus copies of Windows XP as part of a large order. Of course he's taken them back and replaced them but he's now lost a customer who once spent a lot of money with his business every month. And we'll get exactly the same response from surfers when we sell them on a paysite that's nothing but a rip off.

Do I expect my little sermon here to change the way other webmasters do business? Of course not! Greed and stupidity go hand in hand in this industry and sadly, we're going to go on destroying our market for years to come.

Linking strategies - how to consign your site to hell
If you've been wandering around a few different mainstream business boards lately you might have come across a story about Google and a lot of real estate businesses in the United States. It seems that Google has dumped a lot of local real estate sites from their listings because these guys were doing some silly things with links.

There was a lot of indiscriminate reciprocal linking going on between lots of little real estate businesses and the way they were doing it was against Google's guidelines. Of course most of them didn't even know that Google had guidelines but ignorance was no excuse. They got caught and now they're paying the price.

So don't be fooled when you see people on adult boards offering to exchange links. It may be worth looking at but if it's going to be a simple reciprocal link exchange and it's going to happen on a huge scale don't let yourself get fooled. Sure you may see a boost in traffic and position for a little while but the outer darkness is full of websites that Google dumped because their webmasters tried to be smart and artificially boost their rankings and there's always plenty of room for more.

Ah well, that's it for this week. I'm off to Brisbane on Monday for a buying spree for the computer shop. It's always fun to watch salesmen in a cut-throat industry like the computer wholesale industry as they push to make a sale but most of them aren't silly ... they won't promise you the earth and deliver nothing.