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Happy Thanksgiving ... even though it's not an event that we celebrate here in Australia I do understand how important a day it is in America and I hope that you are able to spend it with your family.

It's also a day that some of us have been waiting for with bated breath. Now that may sound a little strange if we don't even celebrate Thanksgiving but it is very important for many of us even though we don't live in the United States.

You see Thanksgiving is the eve of Black Friday ... that day when the shoppers come out to buy up big for Christmas and traditionally retailers have made it into the black after a year of perhaps just breaking even. Originally Black Friday was important for retailers out there in the real world but it's becoming more important for online retailers too.

Unlike the bricks and mortar shops our online shops may not see a huge surge in sales on Black Friday but we will be able to see just how prepared consumers are to spend money and it will give us an indication of the way sales will go this year.

And this year is perhaps even more important than other years. No matter where we are in the world we're facing very difficult financial times ... unemployment is rising so there won't be as much money around and things have been further tightened for people who shop via their credit cards.

Many credit card companies have been cutting back on card limits for their clients and that means that a lot of people no longer have credit in reserve to make their purchases. So Black Friday this year is going to be one that we're all going to be watching.

Here in the part of Australia where I live you could be forgiven for thinking that there was any form of financial crisis. The shopping centre car parks are full and people are in the stores buying big-ticket items and it's going to get even better. Our government will be injecting a huge amount of cash into the economy next week that will give people on low incomes some serious money to spend in the lead up to Christmas.

I just wish it was as going to be as good as that for all you guys in the United States.

While things may be tough for you over there that's no excuse to give up and leave the industry. There are still people out there who want to spend money on the adult products that you are selling and if you want to encourage them to buy from you then there are two things that you simply must do.

You have to make the buying process as easy as possible and you also have to try and establish some level of trust in your site and in what you're selling. And that applies whether you're an affiliate marketer or a paysite owner.

The more steps a person has to take to actually buy what you're selling the more chances there are of losing the sale. So if you're an affiliate marketer make sure that there are plenty of links on your site that a surfer can follow to get to your sponsor and choose sponsors who make the signup process easy for the traffic you send.

In some instances your sponsors will let you link directly to the sales page and if that's the case then use that link rather than sending your traffic to the front page of the sponsor's tour.

You also need to establish some level of trust with your surfers and the easiest way to do that is to avoid making outlandish claims about what a surfer will get if he joins up. Of course you can talk up your product and tell your surfers what the benefits are of buying what you're selling but don't go into hype-overdrive.

The majority of surfers who hit your site aren't stupid and they can spot bullshit so don't leave it lying about on your site. It won't attract your surfers to head over to your sponsor but it certainly will put them off going where you want them to go.

There are other ways of establishing trust too. A couple of sentences reviewing your products can encourage people to buy ... just so long as those reviews aren't loaded up with hype. Personal recommendations are good too ... just don't use the same recommendation for every sponsor that you're advertising.

Spend some time thinking about what impresses you enough to make you want to buy a product online and then look at your sites to see if you can't incorporate those factors that excite you into the marketing on your sites.

Obviously there are some sites that you won't be able to alter but I'm sure that you have plenty that you can change ... so do it. Clean them up ... add in those factors that will encourage people to trust you and ensure that the signup process is quick and simple.

When you do that you just might find that this holiday period ... and the months ahead ... bring more sales than you were expecting.