This is for most the real problem. Dogs that need to learn new tricks.
As for old dogs and new tricks. Well if all you're a dog and your target market is cats you're pretty well screwed. The person who decides in the end if a site makes it or not, or an industry, is the buyer. If you understand him you can sell to him. Cats selling to cats. If you understand affiliates then you could be a dog selling to dogs. Shame when the cat has the food bowl.
Get my drift? Know your audience and you can learn new tricks.
There are 100s here who understand everything about affiliates, driving traffic and getting more traffic. But little about what the traffic needs to make it stop, stay and come back. For the last 8 years that I have been here the solution to falling conversion ratios has always been, send more traffic.
Worked fine until the explosion in traffic senders and sites, coupled with the reluctance of surfers to buy came together. If you convert 1-100 that's 99 not buying, they don't get your message, you're selling them the wrong thing and they are moving on. The answer is not only to send another 100 to get 2 sales, it's also find out why the 99 are not buying and see if you can meet their needs.
Tough job if you think members are losers, models skanks and affiliates the dogs testicles. And after 8 years of doing it your way you will still tell me I'm wrong and tell me the problem is Tube sites. Yes we're charging $30 and we can't compete with a site giving it away for free. So it has to be the fault of the site giving it away for free. We could never be wrong.
I'm off home, good night.