Bad times bring out both the best and worst in people and companies; and while some lesser firms have been melted away in this process, others have embraced the refiner's fire — shedding unwanted elements and turning their core ingredients into gold.

As one example of the increasing industrial excellence which inspired this post, I'll point to veteran adult affiliate program Top Bucks and its recent mobile webinar. While the information that was covered in this interactive video session (which included questions from the live audience via chat) was valuable, to me, the most impressive thing was the commitment of time, energy and money that the company made to provide this learning resource. Sure, it ultimately benefits them, but it is a great example of an affiliate program trying to help itself by helping its affiliates — and I for one was impressed by the effort, which reinforced the company's role as an industry leader.

It's not an issue of "reaching out to newbies," but more an issue of programs adopting increasingly sophisticated technologies and working with their affiliates to better understand and use these tools.

For example, a number of adult programs today make use of complicated APIs that can unlock promotional possibilities previously undreamed of by many affiliates — if only they knew how. A few lines of text on the "tools" page written in what appears to be Pig Latin isn't an effective way to convey the breadth of information needed to maximize these features; but a video tutorial or scheduled live webinar that demoed various uses of the API and provided feedback from its programmers would rock and ultimately make more money for the company that invests in this effort.

The upshot to this story is that while things may be worse out there than we'd like, it's not all bad news, and the companies that survive these trying times and are still here a year or two down the road will represent the best that this industry has ever offered. Will you be among them? If you try a little bit harder, that may not be an undecided question...