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Well it had to happen sooner or later; a major traffic provider has just announced that it is changing it's billing from United States dollars to Euros and suddenly savvy webmasters are beginning to do their sums.

The change - announced by AskJolene - has effectively increased the cost of advertising on their site and buying traffic from them by around 30% and that means a huge reduction in the return on investment for their customers. Of course such an increase in price is painful and there have been plenty of complaints about the increases from those who will have to pay it but increases like this had to happen.

This is a business and we're governed by the same economic principles that impact on the real world. The falling United States dollar has meant that if you live outside the United States, but earn your income in United States dollars, then your income is continuing to decline.

With every fall in the dollar people in this industry who live outside the United States take yet another pay cut and eventually you get to the stage where your income simply doesn't match your expenses. So guys you have to be prepared for more of these increases in prices.

It's no use saying that it's impossible to pass these costs on to the surfer because they simply won't pay more for our products. The fact is that as costs go up someone does have to pay for it and that, inevitably, is the end user.

Sure there will be a lot of buyer resistance - we've been undervaluing our product simply to keep the cash flowing for way too long. Now we're getting to the stage where we simply have to either pass our increased costs on to the surfer to meet their quality expectations or give them a vastly inferior product simply to meet their price expectations.

Either way there is going to be pain and it's going to pass right through the industry. The members are going feel it, the paysite owners are going to feel it, the affiliates are going to feel it and the providers are going to feel it. We can bitch and moan about it as much as we like but that's not going to stop it from happening.

And the more we bitch and moan about it the more time we're wasting. Sure we can make a noise about it but we should also be back looking at our business model to see how we can best adjust to the change that's upon us so that we have some hope of survival.

The one thing we shouldn't do is think that the move by AskJolene is an isolated occurrence and hope that it all blows over because I'm sure that it won't be. Once one of the leaders in traffic takes such a major step as to increase prices you can bet that other suppliers of traffic and content to this industry will do the same because we're all hurting.

So what are you going to do to maintain your income levels as costs go up and the potential for sales in the short-term go down?

It's interesting to see that we in adult are not the only ones who are facing a challenge. One leading SEO provider pondered the question of whether or not the honeymoon is almost over in his blog today. He suggests that, if the honeymoon is over then a lot of people are about to be burnt because they never looked beyond the honeymoon to the reality that was ahead of them.

For those of us who always thought that mainstream was something we could escape into when things got too tough here it's a sobering thought ... especially if you haven't already established a presence on the other side of the fence. Things are changing over there and they're changing just as fast as they're changing here and those who can't keep up will need to find another job.

Oddly enough that doesn't scare me in the slightest. It's just another challenge to overcome in the exciting journey that every Webmaster has to undertake if they want to survive. If you don't see it in the same light then perhaps this industry isn't for you and it might be time to bail out now.

But if you like to do more than just talk about living on the wild side then the times ahead are going to be exciting and. The times might be changing but they're definitely changing for the better.