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Wow ... another day and another site that helped quite a few adult webmasters earn a lot of coin closes its doors. It seems to me that just about every week now we're hearing of yet another sponsor shutting up shop as times stay tough ... and that makes life really difficult for affiliate marketers.

Sadly ... even when times get better ... things are going to stay tough for affiliate marketers in this industry and to think that it won't be that way is a major mistake. We work in an industry that is constantly evolving and there is no reason to believe that the way our sponsors do business won't evolve too.

In fact even in the good times that were around a few years ago some of the big sponsors were seriously thinking of changing their business model to drop most affiliates. They were either doing quite nicely with their own marketing efforts or a few big affiliates were producing enough sales to make the effort of supporting a whole bunch of little affiliates uneconomic.

So tough times for us affiliate marketers is a trend that's going to continue in this industry even when the financial problems that continue to grip parts of the world start to improve. Of course you could always think of heading over to mainstream and trying affiliate marketing there but things aren't any better over there and they're likely to get a whole lot worse ... even for big affiliate marketers.

For reasons that I talked about today over on Porn Resource the days of the affiliate marketer could be numbered thanks to moves that Google seems to be making. While most of us have looked at all the changes that Google has been making for the last few years as isolated instances to improve search it is possible to see a pattern emerging.

That pattern seems to indicate that Google wants to cut out the middleman in as many transactions as it possibly can. It wants to control everything in the purchase funnel right up to the point where the purchase order is sent off to the merchant and of course that's very bad news for anyone who makes their money through affiliate marketing.

With all that doom and possible gloom you might think that I'm suggesting that it's time to pack up here and go looking for something to do in some other industry that might make you rich but that's not what I'm suggesting at all.

What I am suggesting is that perhaps it's time to start looking at ways to stop being the middleman. Instead of being the person that everyone wants to get rid off perhaps now is the time to start being the person that everyone wants. Instead of being the middleman maybe you should look at being the person ... the business ... that Google wants to do business with.

Instead of going on trying to make money as an affiliate marketer perhaps now is a good time to start looking at being the business at the end of the sales funnel in this industry ... the business that has something to sell ... the business that has something that people want to buy ... the business that will still survive when affiliate marketing becomes all too hard.

And what should that business be? Should you look around and see what's working for others and try to replicate it? Should you be looking at something that's working now and looking at ways to do it better or provide a better level of service? Should you be looking for something that's new and innovative?

It all depends on you and just how successful you want to be. It all depends on how much energy you have and how hungry you are to succeed and it all depends on how well you understand the industry.

If you're new here then don't rush into changing the world too quickly. Spend some time understanding how things work here and look for ways that you can improve on what has already been done. If you've been around for a while then maybe you do look for something that's new and innovative ... but ultimately it's all up to you and your willingness to take risks and reap the rewards that may come your way.

Of course you could choose to do almost nothing and stay as an affiliate marketer. Even doing that will be a challenge because the world is changing and if you want to survive then you're going to have to do a lot of evolving to still stay relevant to the people who want to buy things and the people who want to sell things.

But doing absolutely nothing is definitely not going to be an option if you want to survive in the future.