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Have you ever noticed how you might hear or read about a certain topic that you may not have seen discussed before and then suddenly lots of people are talking or writing about it and you're bumping into those discussions wherever you go?

That's been happening to me this week and wherever I seem to go in adult marketing online I'm coming across people who want to talk about moving over to mainstream marketing. Yesterday I mentioned that I had been following a discussion about trends for 2008 where at least one writer had suggested that in the new year we would see a major shift of affiliates from adult over to mainstream.

Late yesterday afternoon I came across another discussion on GFY where people were talking about how easy it would be to move into mainstream because so many mainstream marketers looked and behaved as though they really had no clue. If you were following that thread ... or you believe that mainstream marketers are really nowhere near as savvy as adult marketers are then perhaps it's time to take a dose of reality.

It seemed to me that the person who started that discussion was basing his or her assumptions on what they had read on just one mainstream affiliate marketers' message board. I believe that board was Digital Point and there's no doubt that is a big board with lots of mainstream stuff going on ... but it's definitely not a board that reflects the real situation in mainstream marketing.

Sure, there are a lot of webmasters on that board and most of them really do seem to be working for peanuts. Many of them don't have a clue about real search engine optimisation and fail to grasp that it's not all about links. Many of them certainly think that as long as they're making a few bucks every day from Adsense then they've arrived. And there's also a hell of a lot of sharks working that board too and it's a wonder more newbies don't get eaten alive over there ... but it's definitely not representative of the majority of mainstream marketers.

In fact that mainstream board is no more representative of the level of intelligence and marketing savvy that exists in mainstream than GFY is representative of the level of intelligence and marketing savvy in adult.

But there are boards out there where you will find people who really do have a clue. One of the boards that Steve and I belong to has it's share of green-as-grass newbie affiliates (and merchants too) but it also has some very very savvy mainstream marketers who do understand the importance of search engine optimisation and who do make some serious money every day.

There's no doubt that those guys know what they're doing when you consider that commissions in mainstream are miserable to say the least. Over there you really do have work damn hard to make $35.00 - unlike here where you can make it in just one sale - so for those guys to make money they have to be switched on.

So don't head over to mainstream thinking that it's an easy place to make money. There certainly is competition there and it's competition that's been working in the industry for a long time. They know which way is up and you're not going to be able to cut in on their territory as easily as you might think.

Even though you may understand what it takes to get good listings in the search engines, and you've reached that level here in adult, when you make the move to mainstream you're basically starting from scratch again. And when you have to do that you're going to be competing with those savvy mainstream marketers and reaching your search engine goals will not be as easy as you may think.

Even buying established sites or great type-in domain names is not going to make things any easier for you - even if you do happen to score them at cheap prices. I know one adult marketer and search engine expert who spent a lot of serious money on a very popular domain name and it dropped out of sight in the search engines almost as soon as the transaction had been completed. Now it is back on the front page for some of the terms that are important for him but not all and I don't see it in the top four for any important term.

So before you join any rush to mainstream stop and think seriously about what you're doing. If you're not already there then the chances are that making money over there is going to be much harder than you expected.

It might be far more prudent for you to continue to put most of your effort into adult and just play around the edges of mainstream to see if it really is right for you. There is still plenty of money to be made here in adult and those who suggest that there isn't are either trying to scare off the competition or really have no clue.