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Well that's Christmas for another year and there has certainly been some interesting happenings in the lead up to it.

From a personal point of view it's been great to have some of the kids and grandkids ... yes I'm a grandmother ... up here for Christmas and it was good to get together with my parents and brother and sisters and their kids too. We had lots of laughs and ate way too much just as so many families do at Christmas time.

From a business point of view it was great to look back and see that, while sales are down around the world, online sales are definitely up. While I've seen no definite figures just yet, it seems that online sales continued to do well even relatively close to Christmas. It certainly seems that some affiliate marketers that I've spoken to were still getting big sales as late as 10 days before Christmas.

Now some of those late online sales may have been due to the weather conditions that have been creating problems across America but it might also be an indicator that online shopping ... especially at Christmas ... is really coming of age and can only be good for online marketers.

Here in adult there was another very interesting development just before Christmas. It seems that cross-sales have always been a no-no as far as Mastercard even though it's been something that many sponsors have done for years. In fact cross-sales have been so important to this industry that quite a few sponsors have a business plan that's based on cross-sales

Now though anyone's business plan that's built on cross-sales is in tatters because Mastercard has decided to enforce its rules on cross-sales and penalize anyone they catch doing cross-sales. The penalty isn't light - $50k and you can bet that there aren't going to be many sponsors who continue on with the practice of cross-selling.

How that will affect the industry in the coming weeks is definitely going to be interesting and I'm sure that some of the things you will see will be sponsors selling out to competitors; some sponsors reducing their commissions to affiliates and some sponsors just closing their programs and disappearing.

Perhaps we might see the whole commission structure of affiliate marketing here in adult change for the worse. Because of the current financial situation it must harder for sponsors to retain members ... no matter how good their members' areas are ... and when fewer trials convert to full membership it becomes harder for sponsors to pay large commissions on small trial signups.

Once again you may be thinking that I'm trying to tell you that there are some very gloomy times ahead of us and there's no doubt that there are some tough times ahead. But in tough times there are always opportunities to make money and if you're not looking for those opportunities then you're missing out.

And before you start asking me what opportunities there are for affiliate marketers in tough times like these let me tell you that a recent study has found that people are now spending more time online than ever before. That means that there are more chances for people to see our marketing message so we should be out there getting our message in front of every potential customer we can find.

Sure, the amount of disposable income people have is going to be less than what it once was and you're going to have to work harder to encourage people to buy what you're selling because there will be less impulse buying in the months ahead but that doesn't mean that you're not going to make money. Instead of just showing the people who are visiting your site a whole bunch of hardcore images spend some time talking to them and convincing them that your sponsor is the one that's going to give them all the hardcore action that they're looking for. At times like this it's all about persuasion marketing.

Of course that's not going to be easy ... especially if you're doing TGPs ... but it can be done and if you want to increase your chances of making a sale then you're going to have to learn the art of convincing someone to part with their money.

Some people are going to find that very hard to do but good marketers are adaptable and if you want to survive then you have to be just the same.

Now I'm off to do some of that persuasion marketing that I've just been talking about. Try it and you'll soon see that it can be a lot more fun than just throwing some images into a gallery and hoping for the best.