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You just know that times are starting to get a little tough when you see experienced webmasters hitting the boards to complain about poor ratios. You're always going to see people complaining about ratios but more often than not the people who are complaining are relatively new to the industry.

Just lately though it's not only the new people who are complaining, it's also quite a few experienced webmasters who have been around for a while. I'm also hearing similar complaints from some sponsors and those that you would think of as being at the top end of the affiliate ladder too.

If you haven't been keeping your eye on the economic situation in a number of countries you might be surprised to see that people in the industry are experiencing a decline in sales. But if you have been watching where the economy in most western countries is heading this wouldn't be much of a surprise at all.

Even in countries where the economy is said to be booming the amount of discretionary dollars in the hands of consumers is declining and when that happens even the sex industry - whether it's out there on the streets or online porn - is going to suffer. Of course you're going to find some who will tell you that sex is always going to sell and, to some degree they're right, but when there's not much disposable income in consumers' pockets then sex is not going to sell as well as you might hope for.

Assess your budget
So what can you do as an affiliate to survive this rather barren period? Well the very first thing you should do is not panic. Instead of running around tearing your hair out accept the fact that your income is likely to drop and stay down for a while and start looking at your options.

Before you do anything else take a look at your budget both for your business and for your home. Identify areas where you can cut your spending and also look at areas where you should increase your spending. Maybe stop buying things on credit and try and reduce the amount of debt on your credit cards. Maybe put off buying the new car you had planned or even buy a less expensive model. Identify ways where you can get more bang for your business buck too.

Spend more on marketing
One of the ways where you should never cut down on your business spending is in marketing. If you want to survive then the very last place you should be cutting your spending is in the area of marketing. One very wise real estate agent that we know of has a very simple philosophy when it comes to advertising in the boom and bust cycles that always come with the real estate industry.

In those periods when sales are easy to make and everyone wants to buy a house he cuts back on his advertising. He certainly doesn't stop it but he doesn't go overboard with advertising when times are good. Instead he salts his money away and brings it out when times are tough. That's the time when he really plows a lot of money into advertising and so far that has worked for him over a lot of years.

So don't cut back on your marketing and traffic generation when times are tough. When times are tough that's the time to do more, generate more galleries, more free sites and buy more traffic.

Look at new marketing options
When you work online every day it's easy to think that this is the only place you can get traffic to your websites. You end up with a very narrow focus that can really cause you problems because there are lots of other ways to get traffic to your sites besides what you might find online.

Look around at your other advertising options. Think about advertising a landing page in a men's magazine. There are plenty of magazines out there that will take your advertising ... and you're supposed to be a marketing genius so try a new medium and see what you can do to attract fresh traffic to a website where you might be able to sell them on your sponsor.

And don't think that affiliates aren't doing just that right now because they are. Have a look around the various magazines - further down the food chain than Playboy and Hustler - and you will find that there are affiliates who are pulling in traffic through print advertising.

There are other ways you can get your marketing message out there too. All you have to do is be prepared to try new ways of getting eyeballs in front of your marketing message. It may not be easy but if you want to survive the dry times as we're experiencing now you have to be prepared to go beyond what's easy and really work hard.

Never give up
Finally there is one more thing that you should do when times get hard. You should make a conscious decision to never give up. The moment you give up you're beaten, it's all over Red Rover and you'll never come back. So never ever give up because the dry times will end and you want to be around when that happens.