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It has definitely been an interesting week not only for Steve and me but for just about everyone in adult marketing online. For a long time many of us have considered that perhaps the biggest threat to our business model has been government intervention through the enactment of crazy laws designed to do nothing more than destroy us but that hasn't been the case.

The biggest threat to our business model isn't coming from without, it's coming from within and it's crept up on us while we weren't watching; it's taken advantage of our reluctance to do anything positive to protect our content and now it's reaping the benefits. Of course here I'm referring to those tube sites that so many of us thought would never really amount to anything much.

The fact is that now they do amount to a whole lot of pain for many affiliate marketers because we're losing sales to them. Just how much of a pain they're going to be became very obvious late last week when a major sponsor, Twistys, announced that they had struck a deal with a tube site and were happy to accept signups from that tube site.

In some ways though it wasn't so much the fact that Twistys was taking signups from the tube site - you would have to be crazy not to think that other sponsors have been doing that for quite some time - it was the fact that Shap from Twistys suggested that tube sites were definitely going to be the future for adult marketing as far as sponsors were concerned.

So is it time to panic and rush off to get out of adult and look for some other way to make money online? I don't think so but I think that we're facing a real challenge and the only way to overcome that challenge is to find a better way of attracting surfers.

Now that's definitely going to be hard because the marketing model in this industry is just plain crazy. No other industry gives away their product for free and then expects potential customers to sign up for more of what we've just given them.

Unfortunately while it might be a crazy marketing model we're stuck with it and tube sites are working with that same model so we have to come up with something within that model that will be more appealing to porn surfers. And it undoubtedly will happen, I have no clue as to what it might be at the moment.

People will grow tired of tube sites and they will look for something that has a better delivery, better presentation etc. than tube sites and when they find it they will flock to it just as so many are flocking to tube sites today. That's the nature of the Internet, it's tidal, there are ebbs and flows just as Voltar, one well-known adult marketer, suggested years ago.

What's popular today will gradually lose its popularity and people will move on to something else. You can only make money from the way you are currently marketing for so long before people grow tired of it and that's something that's not just confined to adult online marketing. It's something that happens all over the Net and even our there in the real world too.

Webmaster boards in mainstream grow and then fade away. People find them incredibly valuable and flock to them; great communities are built up around them and then the rot sets in. Noise to information ratios increase, misinformation flourishes and people drift away.

Starbucks makes a killing from selling a bazillion variations of a simple cup of coffee and there are people queuing out the door for their daily caffeine fix. Then a competitor finds a better way of selling a cup of coffee and the Starbuck queues get shorter and shorter. You see the same situation repeated over and over online and offline and if you want to succeed you always have to be looking ahead and planning for the future.

You have to be aware that there will always be ebbs and flows and you always have to be ready for the time when those ebbs and flows will affect you. You have to be planning ahead and be prepared for those ebbs because if you don't then your business will die. The tide will go out for your business and never return.

However, if you're aware that the success you're enjoying right now won't last forever and you do have plans in place to bring those surfers, customers, clients back to you when they start to drift away then you will survive and prosper.

Even if you don't have any plans in place when those ebbs begin to affect you it is possible to survive. All you need to do is be prepared to recognize what's happening when your sales begin to take a dive and face the reality that what worked yesterday is not working so well today and you need to look for a better way to sell your product.

Yes, tube sites might be the rage with surfers right now and that may be where your sales a disappearing to so now is the time to start looking for what might work better than tube sites. Now's the time to start building whatever it might be that will take money away from those tube sites.

Now really is the time to improvise, adapt and overcome if you want to be in this business for the long term.