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As the 2257 regulations get tougher and tougher for webmasters there has been a certain amount of smugness developing in those of us who don't live in the United States. Somehow we tend to feel immune from those crazy regulations and see them as a problem solely for our competitors who live in the United States.

So we feel good about it ... we think it gives us an edge ... an advantage that we can exploit and so make even more money than what we're making now. We can't wait for even more bad news to emerge so that life goes on getting tougher for our American counterparts.

Frankly I've never really seen those 2257 regulations as applying only to US based webmasters. Sooner or later it will be applied to us too and just because we live outside of the United States won't mean diddly. In case you haven't noticed, those involved in Internet gambling haven't been immune to the laws of the United States just because they live in some other country so we should expect to feel the same pain that the guys in the US are feeling.

Even though we may have a little more breathing space than the US webmasters do we're facing our own grim news and it's not something that will have all that much of an impact in the United States; they'll feel some pain but not as much as we will. Out here in the rest of the world our grim news is the continually falling value of the United States dollar.

That little problem is already being felt by affiliates and webmasters outside of the US but it's going to get a whole lot worse and it's going to hurt because every time the United States dollar drops in value everyone who earns an income in US dollars is taking another pay cut.

Already the United States dollar is worth considerably less than the English Pound and the Euro and even in those countries where the dollar is worth more than our local currency the difference is becoming marginal. As I write this one US dollar is only worth $1.04 Canadian and the exchange rate against the Australian dollar is not that much better.

A few years ago talk of the Canadian and Australian dollar being worth more than the US dollar would have been laughed at and thought of as delusional ... but not any more. It's going to happen and it's almost certainly going to happen within the next few months.

That's very grim news for affiliates and webmasters outside of the United States and it's something that is going to have a very major impact on us. While we might have been laughing at the predicament of US webmasters facing the 2257 regulations they can now be laughing at us because, while their income may remain relatively stable, our income is falling by the minute as the exchange rate drops.

So as your income drops what are you going to do to try and overcome the problem? Are you going to exit the industry? Are you going to think about moving to the United States? Are you going to do nothing and hope it all just goes away?

Well if you're serious about this industry you'll start looking at ways of working harder and working smarter. You'll want to make your traffic work a whole lot harder too and instead of having one shot at selling your sponsors to each surfer that hits your sites you'll need to start looking at ways of having a lot more than just one chance with each surfer.

There's no doubt that it's not going to be easy and things will become a lot tougher but you can survive and you can prosper if you just take the time to work out the best way to achieve that goal. You might even have to cut your expenses for a while and change your lifestyle but there's no easy fix for the problems we face.

There are definitely ways you can survive and if you haven't yet been looking at ways you can overcome the exchange rate problem now is definitely the time to start. Leave it much longer and it could be too late.

Of course, if you're a US based webmaster and you're beginning to feel a little smug I have to tell you that the lower your dollar falls the more it's going to cost to import goods and services and that is going to have an impact on all levels of your economy. Even here in adult you will find that the cost of buying content and other services from overseas will go up and that will have an impact on you and on the sponsors you use.

So is it all gloom and doom? Should you be looking for your parachute? Not just yet but if you're not capable of putting in some extra effort then maybe you should start thinking about looking for the exit.