The Republican operative who was fired by Wal-Mart five years ago for his role in a race-baiting ad, has now been welcomed back to the fold in Bentonville.

The Austin American-Statesman had a nice, balanced story on the advertising tax battle in Texas this weekend.

When James Krewson set up his Austin-based price comparison website, his goals were simple: Steer shoppers toward online deals and make a living in the process.

The internet tax debate is a confusing one. It is often phrased as "taxing the internet," something that surely only a luddite would propose. What’s really going on is that merchants and consumers are being taxed just as they always were. But there’s a new wrinkle. In some ways, there’s little [...]

Painful awards shows arent the only odious things stirring in California these days. State lawmakers want to collect sales taxes on Californians purchases from out-of-state e-commerce retailers.

Giant retailers like Wal-Mart and Target are using mom and pop stores as human shields in their battle against Amazon.com over taxing online sales.

With the highest public debt per capita in the nation, Connecticut's bleak fiscal outlook is causing the legislature to grasp for tax policies that require out-of-state online retailers to collect sales tax on transactions with Connecticut residents. The tax scheme, which potentially affects dozens of online retailers, is better known as the Amazon tax after its largest target, Amazon.com. The Amazon tax is blatantly unconstitutional and is bad news for Connecticut's online shoppers, especially students, causing Amazon to decrease its ties with Connecticut contractors.

Award-winning affiliate marketing blog from an award-winning affiliate program manager, international speaker, author and researcher.

This is a small part of the team of affiliate marketers who were in the Texas capital yesterday to show strong opposition to the Texas bill HB 1317.

Left to right, Brook Schaaf, Daniel M. Clark (sans beret, almost didn't recognize you!), Rebecca Madigan, Scott Hazard, and Shawn Collins.

Thanks guys for getting out there. I heard you rocked it.

(Photo by Shawn Collins)

Zappos terminates Illinois-based affiliates. "contracts with all Illinois marketing associates will be terminated as of May 31st, 2011"

Here is the link to the original story. Overstock will be removing affiliates from Illinois on May 1st 2011.

FatWallet gets much of its commissions from sending customers to major online retailers like Amazon or Overstock. The company is now at risk of losing business to another marketer outside of Illinois that doesn't have to pay those same taxes. None of Illinois' border states have affiliate tax laws.

What a mess...

As I described a few weeks ago, I learned from my Senator that the Massachusetts Senate is filing an AdTax bill. He indicated that he was the one filing it, but this one that I found was filed by Senator Tolman.

By Mr. Tolman, petition (accompanied by bill, Senate, No. 1554) of Tolman for legislation to protect main street retailers and promote sales tax fairness in the Commonwealth [Joint Committee on Revenue].

Here's the text of the bill.

SECTION 1. Section 1 of chapter 64H of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2008 Official Edition, is hereby amended in line 265 by striking out the definition of "Vendor" and replacing it with the following:—

“Vendor”, a retailer or other person selling tangible personal property or services of a kind the gross receipts from the retail sale of which are required to be included in the measure of the tax imposed by this chapter, including any person making sales of tangible personal property or services taxable under this chapter by soliciting business through an independent contractor or other representative if the vendor enters into an agreement with a resident of the commonwealth under which the resident, for a commission or other consideration, directly or indirectly refers potential customers, whether by a link on an internet website or otherwise, to the vendor, if the cumulative gross receipts from sales by the vendor to customers in the commonwealth who are referred to the vendor by all residents with this type of an agreement with the vendor is in excess of ten thousand dollars during the preceding four quarterly periods ending on the last day of February, May, August, and November. Such vendor shall be presumed to be soliciting business through an independent contractor or other representative, a presumption which may be rebutted by proof that the resident with whom the vendor has an agreement did not engage in any solicitation in the commonwealth on behalf of the vendor that would satisfy the nexus requirement of the United States constitution during the four quarterly periods in question.

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill., March 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Sears Holdings Corporation (Nasdaq: SHLD) one of Illinois' oldest retailers, applauds Governor Pat Quinn's approval of House Bill 3659, which will restore long overdue fairness to the tax system for retailers and taxpayers in Illinois. The "E-fairness Law" helps to correct a longstanding problem of out-of-state businesses not collecting and remitting the sales tax in Illinois, a practice that has put brick-and-mortar retailers at an unfair competitive disadvantage for far too long.

Amazon.com is threatening to leave states and terminate relationships with all its affiliates rather than comply with this new law. As we have stated, we will gladly welcome these affiliates to the Sears Affiliate Team. We recognize and value our relationships with our over 6,500 affiliate partners AND the state and local communities we serve and we look forward to adding new affiliates.

Dear Sears,

Please do issue another press release when you actually have the product selection to make affiliates whole after throwing them under the bus.

FYI, you'll not only need every product that Amazon has, but the product selection of hundreds of other merchants who will terminate affiliates because of your selfish actions just to get Amazon.

Guess what. You didn't get Amazon. But you sure did screw Illinois affiliates, including some of your own who you pretend to value.

Well done. Thanks for nothing.

Pat Quinn, the Governor of Illinois is signing the Affliate/Advertising Tax, House Bill HB3659 into law today.

There has probably been stronger opposition from the affiliate industry in this state than any other to date, and it still passed. Big Illinois companies like FatWallet and CouponCabin have publicly stated that they will move out of the state if this is passed, not out of defiance, but to save their businesses. It is a fact that Amazon will terminate affiliate relationships resulting in no collected sales tax.

So why is he signing it?

He's signing it because the proponents of this bill are backed by big box retailers who are throwing a ton of money at it.

They're leaning on state legislators with every bit of FUD they can muster (FUD = fear, uncertainty, and doubt). They are making this all about Amazon, even though to most affiliate marketers, this has little to do with Amazon.

Most importantly, they're playing the "fairness" card. It's not fair to main street retailers that Amazon has a sales tax advantage. "Amazon is not playing fair. Let's get 'em!"

This as become about emotion and principles which is impossible to fight with logic and reason. It doesn't matter that it is a bad bill. It doesn't matter that the end result is zero gained income tax revenue. It doesn't matter that Amazon can simply skirt the law by terminating all affiliate relationships in the state.

The bill passes.
Amazon terminates affiliates.
Other merchants do the same.
Affiliate-powered businesses large and small are decimated.

Tell me. How is that fair?

Hanover Park Press - SPRINGFIELD -- Two Internet-based marketers Thursday urged Gov. Pat Quinn to veto a bill aimed at collecting state sales tax on website purchases and threatened to leave the state if Quinn did not.

Great efforts by Tim Storm of FatWallet and Scott Kluth of Coupon Cabin.

Texas House Bill 1317, filed by Texas House Representative Elliott Naishtat on 2/14/11, has been referred to the Ways Means Committee.

What do your 2010 online holiday shopping purchases have to do with the budget gaps many states are struggling to fill right now? In the eyes of some state and federal legislators, the sales tax that is not being collected by many online merchants is revenue that could help stem the bleeding of state treasuries.

Hey, this is pretty cool news. Buy.at just got a little better, I think.

Good luck Jeannine!

Rae Hoffman is going to be doing a full-day SEO training.

wow, I'm tempted to sign up. Except I hope I'll be golfing at Pound Ridge that day. Yeah, I've got my priorities straight.

Good advice from Jason Rubacky of ShareASale.

MediaTrust Announces $3 Million in funding and several new hires to support MediaTrust's PerformanceExchange, which is soon to launch.

The PMA publishes a new podcast every week or so, called "The Industry Report". Typically Lisa Picarille interviews someone from the affiliate industry. It's always a good listen.

The Affiliates4u community is the largest affiliate marketing forum in Europe.

ABCs Plus is the place to discuss Affiliate ABCs, Blogging ABCs, Merchant ABCs podcasts about affiliate marketing and monetizing blogs.

The 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forums has primary focus on affiliate marketing, having been run by affiliate marketer Linda Buquet for several years. It's a very active forum with topic areas like SEO, content, blogs, and other marketing topics, in addition to affiliate marketing.

The WarriorForum is a well-established, very active Internet Marketing forum. While broader in focus than just affiliate marketing, it does have a strong member-base who discuss affiliate marketing issues and topics.

Affiliate Summit has launched a new forum focused on, of course, Affiliate Marketing, with a focus on networking. It is fairly active for a new forum and has sections for networking, QA, as well as representatives from affiliate networks and OPMs.

ABestWeb is a decade-old affiliate marketing forum that is probably the most well-known in the Affiliate Marketing industry. It focuses primarily on North America, but does have a global audience.

The #1 affiliate marketing forum with over 60,000 members that actively discuss Commission Junction, Linkshare, Google Affiliate Network, Shareasale, Pepperjam Network, marketLeverage and other affiliate marketing networks and issues including parasiteware.

Today I sent emails to my State Representative, Kate Hogan, and my Senator, Jamie Eldridge expressing my opposition to House Bill H01731.

I'm happy to report that I got calls back today from both of them. +1 for my reps for responsiveness.

Representative Kate Hogan

The call with Rep. Hogan went well. She expressed understanding and support in my opposition to this bill, that sometimes bills are written and supported without fully understanding the unintended consequences. She would oppose a bill that has such obvious flaws and would share my concerns with her peers.

Senator Jamie Eldridge

The call with Jamie Eldridge was a different story. Eldridge was firmly in support of this bill. This was surprising to me to get such a strong response out of the gate as most state politicians that I've spoken to on this issue in other states tended to have less understanding of the issue, and only after a discussion came down on one side of the issue or the other.

He cited fairness for Main Street retailers as the most important factor. That Amazon and other online retailers would not at all be affected by this law, and that it would result in no additional tax revenue was really a non-issue to him.

My points that the law would accomplish nothing but harm to Massachusetts business received little acknowledgement or sympathy. Very disappointing.

The important thing to him was that he supported "fairness" and that the more states pass this legislation, the more likely it would be for companies like Amazon to give in and collect sales tax. His arguments were based more in principle than in practicality and reality. It is difficult to argue with that.

Senator Eldridge then shared with me that he has filed an identical bill, Senate Docket S01527. As it turns out, I didn't realize until the end of the conversation that I was talking to the sponsor of the exact same bill on the Senate side. That explained everything!

Incidentally, I could not find this bill S01527 anywhere on the Mass legislature website. So either I wrote the number down wrong, or it is not up there yet. It did sound very new.

Surely he's receiving pressure from local businesses, chambers of commerce, etc., and this is his way of doing something for them -- regardless of the likely outcome.

Needless to say, I felt like I got nowhere. Does the sponsor of a bill ever give in?

I thanked him kindly and ensured him that he'd be hearing more from me. :)

I got a call back immediately from my Rep, Kate Hogan, who said she would oppose the bill and share my email with her peers, that too often people don't recognize unintended consequences of legislation.

Emails and letters do absolutely make a difference. I've seen first-hand by being involved in other states that they get printed out, carried around, and read out loud at meetings and hearings. If there are enough of them, they get dropped on the podium for the thud factor.

I urge you to contact your own reps. If you're looking for ideas about what to write, I'd be happy to share my own letter.

Here's a good list of things NOT to do..

• Take forever to review applications.
• Reject affiliates without explanation.
• Make small affiliates feel like pond scum.
• Fall behind the technology curve.
• Treat the affiliate channel as an afterthought.

Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille have been at this going on four years now. It's a great show, always keeping up with the latest in affiliate marketing news.

Shawn and Lisa record on Monday mornings.

Review of the new ShareASale new merchant interface, which was announced at Affiliate Summit West 2011 in Las Vegas (where I saw it for the first time along with the ShareASale team).

People like “slick” user interfaces, and often (inaccurately) judge the quality of technology based on its interface. As a result, I feel that ShareASale may have lost a few merchants to networks that have slick interfaces. Luckily for us, ShareASale has focused their efforts to date, on their network quality.

Well – after the launch of this new interface, there should be no under-estimating the quality of this technology and this amazing network.

I'm looking forward to an overhaul of the affiliate interface.

Daniel M. Clark is producing a really great set of both long-form interviews (20-30 minute range) and what he calls "Short Shots" which are shorter podcasts (less than 10 minutes).

Daniel is mostly providing interviews with industry folks like Todd Farmer, Shawn Collins, Jen Goode, Jim Kukral, Jason Rubacky, and more. As of this post, he's up to lucky number 13.

Unlike most affiliate podcasts, these are hosted on Daniel's own QAQN podcast network.

Affiliate Thing's latest episode, including updates on the Advertising Tax, Affiliate Summit Keynotes, Treamill desks, and more (not least of which, Shawn's new cowboy boots.)

If you're an affiliate in Massachusetts, you should join the PMA MA advertising tax google group. You'll receive important updates and information related to this issue.

If you live in Massachusetts, you should be contacting your legistators about the H01731 bill, Massachusetts AdTax

This bill H01731 is titled, "An Act to protect main street retailers and promote sales tax fairness in the Commonwealth"

Section 1 of chapter 64H of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2008 Official Edition, is hereby amended in line 265 by striking out the definition of "Vendor" and replacing it with the following:—

“Vendor”, a retailer or other person selling tangible personal property or services of a kind the gross receipts from the retail sale of which are required to be included in the measure of the tax imposed by this chapter, including any person making sales of tangible personal property or services taxable under this chapter by soliciting business through an independent contractor or other representative if the vendor enters into an agreement with a resident of the commonwealth under which the resident, for a commission or other consideration, directly or indirectly refers potential customers, whether by a link on an internet website or otherwise, to the vendor, if the cumulative gross receipts from sales by the vendor to customers in the commonwealth who are referred to the vendor by all residents with this type of an agreement with the vendor is in excess of ten thousand dollars during the preceding four quarterly periods ending on the last day of February, May, August, and November. Such vendor shall be presumed to be soliciting business through an independent contractor or other representative, a presumption which may be rebutted by proof that the resident with whom the vendor has an agreement did not engage in any solicitation in the commonwealth on behalf of the vendor that would satisfy the nexus requirement of the United States constitution during the four quarterly periods in question.

Get the latest news and AdTax developments on the following states that have active legislation in 2011:

• Texas
• Vermont
• Illinois
• Minnesota
• Connecticut
• Hawaii
• California
• Arizona
• Colorado
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• New Mexico

Given that I haven't posted anything on AffBook.com in nearly a year, and that RSS may be broken for a little while, it'll be amazing if anyone really notices...but welcome to the new AffBook.com

I've moved AffBook.com from being hosted on a Wordpress blog to this new Shareist.com website. With this platform, I can still treat it like a blog for me, as well as a curation site about Affiliate Marketing.

Plus, anyone can join in and do the same. Sign up and let me know you've made it over.

Hartford CT is just 90 short minutes from my house, so I went down there yesterday to support a handful of Connecticut-based affiliates who were also heading over in an effort to put a stop to SB 5481, CT's version of the advertising tax.

To the uninitiated, this seems like a pretty intimidatng thing, to head to a state capital and face state representatives. But it really couldn't be farther from the truth.

Here's what it's like. We hang out in the lobby and hallways outside of the meeting rooms.

The place is swarming with lobbyists. They are there all day long pulling legislators aside and talking to them about the issues. There were at least three lobbyists there working on this issue with us. They made every introduction.

We were among the ONLY non-lobbyist and non-government individuals in the whole place. You don't think that makes an impact? Think again.

Here's the crew, with me way in the background as I should be in Connecticut (I'm from Massachusetts). The folks with me are the heroes who are stepping up on behalf of the thousands of affiliates in Connecticut.

In this picture are affiliate marketers (L to R) are John Napoletano, Vincent Villano, Kevin Mardorf and his GF Jennifer, Tom Caporaso, and Scott Jangro (yours truly).

Are You From Connecticut?

If you are an affiliate from Connecticut, your livelyhood is at risk. There is somehthing you can do about it immediately.

First, make a call or send an email. Send an email NOW as the Finance Committee meeting is this afternoon. They need a stack of printed emails to wave around.

UPDATE: The bill has passed the finance committee with votes along party lines. This spells trouble as the House and Senate are both majority Democrats and will keep pushing this through barring any reason to do otherwise. You are the reason to do otherwise, so call and send letters and emails. They do make a huge difference.

Here's a list of the CT Finance Committee members. Just tell them about yourself, where you live, that you oppose the bill, and that you are concerned that your job is in jeopardy because advertisers and merchants will terminate their relationship with you rather than collect sales tax from CT residents.

Second, keep an eye out for the next time folks are gathering at the capitol. The best way to do this is to get yourself onto the PMA email list as a CT affiliate.

I promise you, it is nothing but fun and rewarding. It's like an affiliate marketing meetup with an occasional discussion with state reps.

Save your own ass by getting off it!

Read more here at the PMA website.

If you're an affiliate who has moved your business to another state, of if you're sitting in a no-sales-tax state like New Hampshire thinking that you're untouchable, you're wrong.

This letter came from Drs. Foster and Smith to all affiliates today (bold is mine):

It is with great regret that we have to inform you that we are shutting down affiliate marketing at Drs. Foster and Smith effective immediately February 22, 2010. This closure is across the board in all states with all affiliates and is not related to you only as one of our affiliates.

We regret having to do this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that so many of you have done a great job for Drs. Foster and Smith and will be adversely affected by the loss of revenue from Drs. Foster and Smith sales. Thank you for all you have done to promote our company on your web sites. We apologize for the hardship and inconvenience that this creates for you.

The single reason for the decision at this time is the moving target of the ever-growing patchwork quilt of state legislatures that are considering nexus legislation relative to affiliate marketing and sales tax. It has become increasingly difficult to determine who is considering such laws, where they are in the process and what the ramifications are in each state. What affiliates may not be aware of is that such nexus situations do not only relate to sales tax collection, but potentially state income tax for a corporation as well.

We wish there was clarity on this issue from state to state and nationally, but there isn't. So until this matter is cleared up nationally, we are shutting down all affiliate marketing. We apologize for any hardships this brings to you and your team. We have greatly appreciated the work that you have done on our behalf. The sudden nature of the move by California to reintroduce legislation late last week and to push for a quick vote, emphasized the ever-changing nature of this issue and our need to be ahead of such votes and decisions.

With our appreciation for your contribution to our company,

Sincerely,

Drs. Foster and Smith Affiliate Marketing Team

This isn't just happening to NC, RI, and a few other states. It is officially happening to all of us.

They are SHUTTING DOWN AFFILIATE MARKETING.

More here and here.

Get involved.

Listen to these videos from affiliate marketers speaking out against the advertising tax.

source

source

source

There is currently legislative activity going on in several states including California, Nevada, Virginia, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Illinois. These states are at risk for passing the ad tax in the next several weeks as these states are desperate for money, if only on paper, to balance their budgets.

If you are from one of these states, it is urgent that you make your voice heard. See the PMA website for actions you can take and to sign up to be on the email list to get more information specific to your state.

If you haven't seen it by now, CJ has put together a very nice resource page sharing all the information they're gathering. Commission Junction clearly has some serious resources on this issue, as I know all the networks do, but it is great to see some very visible results of these efforts.

A US map with CJ's own risk assessment
A stream of updates on any activity in any state
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of all updates

You can see from the current map that things are potentially heating up in California, Nevada, Oklahoma, Illinois, Vermont, North Carolina, Florida, and Alabama.

There are many resources available to keep tabs on the Advertising tax. This is a great one.

See the entire resource here.

Are you seeing more ads from your friends on Twitter? Several of the people I'm following on Twitter are pushing ads through their Twitter streams. I assume they're using services like Sponsored Tweets, though they could simply be affiliate links.

First, this post isn't meant to be critical of their activity. It's just got me thinking about this means and how we perceive the things that our friends say and recommend online.

None of the ads that I've noticed have actually offended me. In fact, they were particularly relevant this past weekend. On Friday and Saturday I saw some reminders to buy flowers. Today I saw one promoting tax preparation.

But I wonder if these people are personally recommending these products? Have they used them? Or do they just have space for sale on their twitter streams?

I'm all for making a buck and if my friends are popular enough in the social media space that they can sell spots on their clothes, cars, or twitter streams for cash money, that's great.

But to me there's a difference between wearing an ad on your shirt or having it plastered on your car and having it appear intermixed with your ordinary conversations.

Dale Jr. wears Amp Energy drink, National Guard, Budweiser, and a dozen more ads on his clothes and cars, but I doubt he works them into his conversations. I'd bet that Phil Mickelson has never uttered the words "Bearing Point" while chatting with his buddies at the 19th hole.

That would probably become pretty annoying if he did that.

And how do we tell the difference between a real recommendation and a bought one? At what point do we stop trusting that our friends are providing completely unbiased recommendations?

After a day of Google Buzz, you're probably starting to form your own opinions.

Many have called it a Twitter killer. Others claim that it is making a play on Facebook. Calacanis stated that Facebook's valuation dropped in half yesterday.

Personally, I absolutely love it. Here's why...

It is integrated with GMail. I'm in Gmail all day anyway, so having easy access to it is perfect for me. I realize that this isn't true for many, and for them there will probably be desktop clients that integrate with Buzz. There is already an API. I predict that Seesmic will be first to market with this integration.

Conversations. If you've been using Buzz for the past day and don't immediately see that the one thing that Twitter has sorely missed is conversations, then there is no hope for you. Go back to Eudora. The conversations that I've been involved in are fantastic. Buzz has got me in touch with people who I haven't conversed with in months. It's also got me talking to people who I have never even met before, friends of friends.

FriendFeed did most of this, but adoption was poor. FriendFeed does most things better actually, that I hope Google will incorporate somehow.

That's it. It really isn't anything more than that.

Danger!

There are a few risks to Buzz. First, it exposes your Google profile and Gmail account. This was already out there if you created a pretty URL for your profile.

Mine is http://google.com/profiles/sjangro

If you want one that doesn't look like your car's VIN, edit your profile and way down the bottom, you can select the pretty version:

Also, unless you explicitly set up a private Buzz, what you write is entirely public information. They are visible on your profile, and every Buzz has a "permalink" and Google is indexing buzzes.

This is no different from Twitter, but I think that it is much more obvious on Twitter that what you're saying is visible to the world. Since Buzz is much more intimate, you may fall into a false sense of security that you're only talking to your friends.

If you're not on Buzz yet, do check it out. It's a game changer.

Are you reading these Twitter updates from Senator Brophy of Colorado today?

Looks like there is some good news coming for Colorado affiliates, even better than I talked about earlier today...

(times are based on approx 8:30 pm CT Friday Feb 5)

Senator, if you're reading this, thank you for your support, openness, and most of all common sense!

Last night, the Colorado Senate passed HB1193, the Colorado version of the Affiliate Tax.

There were well over 100 affiliate marketers at the Capitol for the entire day yesterday (some for the entire week) talking to Senators about this bill. They'd been negotiating and working for 15 hours prior to the time the bill reached the Senate floor for discussion.

I wasn't there, so that isn't my story to tell. After the folks who were there wake up after an exhausting week, I'm sure they'll share all the details.

But let me describe what I think went on from the Colorado Government standpoint.

Why are they doing this and why do they not seem to be able to think and act reasonably and logically?

What really happened in Colorado this week?

Like many states, Colorado is in a budget crisis. In Colorado, Democrats control everything, House, Senate, and Governor (who, btw, is a lame duck).

The state needs a balanced budget and the democrats have put together a package of about 15 tax bills, each bill contributing some amount of money on paper toward a balanced budget.

The Affiliate Tax bill is "worth" $4.7MM toward that budget. Again, on paper.

This, and all the other bills, would pass no matter what. Maybe with some amendments, but they would pass. The democrats would make sure of it. A non-balanced budget is not an option.

The House

This bill started out just like the other states' Affiliate Tax bills. Standard Affiliate Tax language that would result in Amazon, Overstock, and hundreds of other merchants terminating the affiliates in that state.

However, after the largest showing of affiliates to date at any state's proceedings on similar legislation, the Reps in the House last week and earlier this week seemed to get the fact that there's nothing about an online publisher located in Colorado who has a server hosted in, say, Texas, who does nothing to directly target Colorado residents that constitutes "Physical Presence". Speaking of "constituting", this was surely starting to feel very un-Constitutional to the legislators.

They reacted by adding an amendment that essentially said that "affiliates" who promoted via electronic means only were exempt from the nexus-creating criteria in this bill. So who's left? Good question. It's people who promote in person to Coloradoans and point them to their website to shop at a merchant they have an affiliate relationship with. An example given by the bill's sponsor was a church pastor encouraging his parish to go to the website to support the church by shopping through their affiliate links.

Now, anyone who knows anything about the affiliate marketing business knows that that leaves virtually nobody who meets the nexus forming criteria. But the wording of the amendment wasn't really enough. Even though it seemed to neuter the entire bill, it still left merchants exposed to the requirements. Merchants have no way of knowing how their affiliates promote them. And one single affiliate who stands in front of a group of people and promotes their website could "establish nexus". That's still too risky.

But that amendment allowed the bill's sponsor Pommer to essentially wave off the entire affiliate marketing contingent who had showed up in force. He said that every affiliate marketer who showed up there was exempt!

Note, the amendment didn't change the expected revenue of $4.7MM. How could this possibly be? Again, having this number on paper seems to be the critical thing. Not whether they'll actually see any of that revenue. Crazy dream world.

The bill passed a voice vote on Friday night, and it passed the standing vote on Monday by one vote. 33-32. A handful of Democrats broke ranks and even one, Rep. Rice, felt strongly enough to stand up and speak against the bill's passage. He now has zero friends.

The Senate

Next stop for any bill on its way to becoming a law is the Senate. Affiliate marketers, knowing that the amendment wasn't enough, shifted attention to the Senators.

The Senators have probably rarely if ever seen such a large turnout by a group of interested parties on any given bill. This was surely a week for the history books in the State of Colorado. They couldn't help but get the message that there are a LOT of business still at risk.

But they were going to pass this bill. It was needed to balance the budget.

However, it seems that they did continue to negotiate to further appease the online-only affiliates and strengthen the amendment that exempts any affiliate who does no physical promotion in the state.

We are yet to see this amendment, but word from the people on the ground in Colorado is that it is well worded to remove the risk from the merchant advertisers. Onus is on the Department of Revenue to identify any affiliate that they are engaging in nexus-forming activity and they will apparently have 30-day notice. Further, merchants will have 30 days after being notified of this affiliate's activity to remove them from their program.

As expected, the Senate passed the bill onto Appropriations with the above amendment. The amendment hasn't made its way into the bill yet, there is apparently some process to get that added.

And it isn't over yet. It still has to get through the Governer, but nobody expects him to veto this. Especially with the amendment language added that exempts electronic-only affiliates.

What Will Merchants Do?

If the amendment bears out and all the above is true, I have a hard time seeing any merchant terminating their entire Colorado affiliate base unless (a) they are taking a strong stance to make a legal point (like Amazon probably feels they must do to support their case in New York), or (b) they are simply misinformed.

Given that the Colorado State legislature was going to pass this bill and all the other tax bills by hook or by crook, this seems as close to a win as we could possibly expect.

The incredible showing of affiliates in Colorado didn't get the bill killed, but it was changed almost to the point of killing it from our perspective. I'm not going to call it a win until it's over, but so far it is far from a failure, and folks calling it a failure on twitter and blog posts immediately after watching the hearing live on the internet last night seem to have jumped the gun.

Keep up the good fight Colorado. You guys are so awesome.

And everyone else in a state that has sales tax, pay close attention and prepare. You could be next.

This went to my mail list this morning and I received a bunch of good feedback on it so I'm reposting it here. If you were on my mail list, you would have seen this earlier today before the rest of the world. So sign up, because I actually rarely post the emails to the blog.

Yesterday, the State of Vermont introduce an Affiliate Tax bill of their own, Bill H.661.

Title: An Act relating to Taxation of Certain Internet Sales
Sponsors: Jeffrey Wilson (D), John Rodgers (D), and Megan Smith (D).

(Vermont Legislature Directory)

There's no word yet from inside sources on how real a threat this is. It may have strong support (like Colorado) or no legs (like New Mexico, Mississippi, and Virginia).

Stay tuned, and if you are from Vermont, be sure to register your support at the PMA to receive exclusive alerts on how you can help prevent this in your state.

The Colorado Finance Committee had a hearing on Senate bill 2927 today.

According to Rebecca Madigan, who was there to testify on behalf of the PMA, more than 100 affiliate marketing supporters showed up in force. Rebecca herself almost didn't make it due to flight issues. After a day of planes, trains and automobiles, she did make it in time to testify thanks to a late start. Sometimes it is good that the wheels of justice turn slowly.

In spite of the strong showing, the bill did pass motion to the next phase of review:

However, the fight isn't quite over. This particular committee voted (6 yes to 5 no) to recommend that the bill be moved to the next phase of review (the process changed in the morning, still getting details on that). However, two of the 6 'yes' votes have serious questions on the bill and want to learn more. We are trying to figure out the next steps and then will communicate directly with the Coloradoans who have helped out so far. Another letter may be in order!

If you are from Colorado and want to be in the loop on next steps, register for free on the PMA website.

Mississippi is the latest state to jump on the Affiliate tax bandwagon. Senator Tommy A. Gollott of District 50 introduced Senate Bill SB2927, "Use tax; person soliciting remote sales through representatives in this state is subject to use tax." It was referred to the finance committe on 1/18, requires a majority vote, and will go into effect on July 1, 2010.

Here's the all-too-familiar text.

Notably, this bill has no minimums (most states state a minimum of $10,000 in sales).

Stay tuned for a reading from folks tied into the lobbyists and legislators on whether this one has legs or not.

In the meantime, if you're from Mississippi, prepare to contact your representatives.

Don't miss a thing!
If you're in affiliate marketing as a merchant, affiliate, network, or agency AffBook.com is for you.

Can you stay on top of every blog post on AffBook.com?
Can you keep up with every tweet?
Would you mind getting an email from me once in a while containing info and issues important to you, your business, or affiliate marketing?

If you answered "No" to those questions, please sign up for my mail list.

af-form-617143 .af-body .af-textWrap{width:70%;display:block;float:right;}

af-form-617143 .af-body a{color:#000000;text-decoration:underline;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;}

af-form-617143 .af-body input.text, #af-form-617143 .af-body textarea{background-color:#FFFFFF;border-color:#CCCCCC;border-width:2px;border-style:inset;color:#000000;text-decoration:none;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;}

af-form-617143 .af-body input.text:focus, #af-form-617143 .af-body textarea:focus{background-color:inherit;border-color:#CCCCCC;border-width:2px;border-style:inset;}

af-form-617143 .af-body label.previewLabel{display:block;float:left;width:25%;text-align:left;color:#000000;text-decoration:none;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;}

af-form-617143 .af-body{padding-bottom:15px;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:inherit;background-image:none;color:inherit;font-size:12px;font-family:, serif;}

af-form-617143 .af-quirksMode .bodyText{padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:2px;}

af-form-617143 .af-quirksMode{padding-right:15px;padding-left:15px;}

af-form-617143 .af-standards .af-element{padding-right:15px;padding-left:15px;}

af-form-617143 .bodyText p{margin:1em 0;}

af-form-617143 .buttonContainer input.submit{color:#000000;text-decoration:none;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;}

af-form-617143 .buttonContainer input.submit{width:auto;}

af-form-617143 .buttonContainer{text-align:center;}

af-form-617143 body,#af-form-617143 dl,#af-form-617143 dt,#af-form-617143 dd,#af-form-617143 h1,#af-form-617143 h2,#af-form-617143 h3,#af-form-617143 h4,#af-form-617143 h5,#af-form-617143 h6,#af-form-617143 pre,#af-form-617143 code,#af-form-617143 fieldset,#af-form-617143 legend,#af-form-617143 blockquote,#af-form-617143 th,#af-form-617143 td{float:none;color:inherit;position:static;margin:0;padding:0;}

af-form-617143 button,#af-form-617143 input,#af-form-617143 submit,#af-form-617143 textarea,#af-form-617143 select,#af-form-617143 label,#af-form-617143 optgroup,#af-form-617143 option{float:none;position:static;margin:0;}

af-form-617143 div{margin:0;}

af-form-617143 fieldset{border:0;}

af-form-617143 form,#af-form-617143 textarea,.af-form-wrapper,.af-form-close-button,#af-form-617143 img{float:none;color:inherit;position:static;background-color:none;border:none;margin:0;padding:0;}

af-form-617143 input,#af-form-617143 button,#af-form-617143 textarea,#af-form-617143 select{font-size:100%;}

af-form-617143 p{color:inherit;}

af-form-617143 select,#af-form-617143 label,#af-form-617143 optgroup,#af-form-617143 option{padding:0;}

af-form-617143 table{border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;}

af-form-617143 ul,#af-form-617143 ol{list-style-image:none;list-style-position:outside;list-style-type:disc;padding-left:40px;}

af-form-617143,#af-form-617143 .quirksMode{width:400px;}

af-form-617143.af-quirksMode{overflow-x:hidden;}

af-form-617143{background-color:transparent;border-color:inherit;border-width:none;border-style:none;}

af-form-617143{overflow:auto;}

.af-body .af-textWrap{text-align:left;}
.af-body input.image{border:none!important;}
.af-body input.submit,.af-body input.image,.af-form .af-element input.button{float:none!important;}
.af-body input.text{width:100%;float:none;padding:2px!important;}
.af-body.af-standards input.submit{padding:4px 12px;}
.af-clear{clear:both;}
.af-element label{text-align:left;display:block;float:left;}
.af-element{padding:5px 0;}
.af-form{text-align:left;margin:auto;}
.af-quirksMode .af-element{padding-left:0!important;padding-right:0!important;}
.lbl-right .af-element label{text-align:right;}
body {
}

Name

Email

(function() {
    var IE = /*@cc_on!@*/false;
    if (!IE) { return; }
    if (document.compatMode  document.compatMode == 'BackCompat') {
        if (document.getElementById("af-form-617143")) {
            document.getElementById("af-form-617143").className = 'af-form af-quirksMode';
        }
        if (document.getElementById("af-body-617143")) {
            document.getElementById("af-body-617143").className = "af-body inline af-quirksMode";
        }
        if (document.getElementById("af-header-617143")) {
            document.getElementById("af-header-617143").className = "af-header af-quirksMode";
        }
        if (document.getElementById("af-footer-617143")) {
            document.getElementById("af-footer-617143").className = "af-footer af-quirksMode";
        }
    }
})();

A bill was introduced to Colorado Legislation on Friday the 24th, Colorado House Bill 1193, that brings the Affiliate Tax to that state.

Here's the pertinent section of the bill:

According to some folks in Colorado, there is a hearing on Wednesday January 27 to where a number of Colorado-based affiliate marketers will surely be rallying.

The Performance Marketing Association is very on top of this and will be helping by coordinating a grass-roots effort. You may remember what they accomplished in California. The same, with even more strength, can be done in Colorado with the guidance, experience, and coordination of the PMA.

Please register your support with the PMA. It costs nothing to do that. It may cost everything NOT to.

The Virginia Affiliate Tax appears to have surfaced as Senate Bill no. 660 on January 21st, 2010. There have been rumors of this bill being in the works this past week.

It contains the standard copycat language that the other state bills contain. Here's the pertinent section, highlighting is theirs indicating the new text:

If you're from Virginia, the absolute best thing you can do is to register your support in fighting this tax on the Performance Marketing Association website. The best chance we have in defeating this bill and similar bills in other states is to work together in a coordinated fashion to go with the same messaging and even visit the state house in a groups. The PMA can help coordinate these efforts like they did in California last year.

Register now on the PMA website.

We were just notified by our lobbying contacts in Virginia that a state senator will be proposing an advertising tax bill. The specifics, such as the decision makers, and where it is in the process, are still to be learned.

Virginia-based affiliates, consider yourselves on notice.

Read more about it here on the PMA website, and register to express your support.

According to Melanie Seery at Affiliate Advocacy, an Affiliate Tax copy-cat bill has been introduced in New Mexico.

This one looks like the real deal, though according to the Performance Marketing Association, it isn't getting any support:

Some media outlets picked up on an advertising tax proposal by New Mexico Representative Eleanor Chavez. But our lobbying sources in New Mexico told us she couldn't get anyone to sign onto the bill with their support, and they expect it is already dead.

Here's the new text in the bill:

Note section D. This may be similar to what happened in New York where merchants would allow NY state affiliates to remain in their program if they agreed (via modified terms) to not directly solicit NY state residents via email or otherwise.

Source: Read the PDF here.

New Mexico affiliates, keep an eye out for some organized efforts like the PMA and others did in California last year to get in front of your state representatives to make them aware of the harm that can come from this.

You can register to help fight in your state here.

Next Monday morning at Affiliate Summit, I'm moderating a panel titled, "Datafeeds: The Next Level". I know what you're thinking, how can so much excitement be contained? The truth is, Las Vegas is the only venue large enough to discuss such an awesome topic.

OK, seriously. I realize that there are more exciting topics than product datafeeds. But I owe my publishing business and career in no small part to product datafeeds and finding creative ways to use them. I hope that there are plenty of people who would like to learn how to use them better or at all.

The panel consists of a really smart set of guys, Larry Adams from Google Affiliate Network, Brian Smith from SingleFeed, and Shergul Arshad from StyleFeeder. Two of them have the word "feed" in their company name. C'mon!

We're going to talk about best practices for merchants and affiliates, how to get started with datafeeds, the possible creation of standards, and more.

A critical element is to get input from attendees on what you want to hear about. We'll probably be accepting questions live via twitter, and certainly by microphone if you're willing to stand up. But why not chime in right here and now with your input on what you'd like to hear about.

What datafeed question do you have for this panel of experts representing the affiliate marketing triumvirate representing affiliate, merchant, and network?

Let us know in the comments and I hope to see you there.

Todd Crawford and Lisa Riolo have finally lifted the veil on the super-secret project that they've been working on for, what, two maybe three or more years?

ImpactRadius launched today in a public beta. It is a new network that, based on my conversations with Todd in the past year, promises to turn the performance marketing industry upside down.

The network enables pay-per-lead -sale, and -call performance-based marketing relationships between advertisers and media partners, including online publishers and affiliates as well as offline print, television, and radio.

From a client perspective, the most exciting part about this is that Impact Radius is introducing what promises to be an open and transparent platform where partners can truly negotiate and optimize their relationships. As a solution provider, Impact Radius is set up to just get out of the way.

The team at Impact Radius aren't only industry veterans themselves, but they also discussed their platform ideas with other people in the industry to get feedback and validate their model. A lot of very smart people have collaborated to put together this new offering.

And they certainly haven't rushed this out the door. As I mentioned, this has been years in the making.

Congrats to Todd and Lisa (and Per, Roger, Paula, Wade, and the rest of the team) on finaly launching.

Get on over to sign up for the Beta.

A friend of mine whom I saw this past September at a "mastermind" type group meeting made an insightful observation about me.

He said, "Scott, I don't feel like you're passionate about anything you're working on."

I protested, "But I'm passionate about my business..." He cut me off.

"No, those are things that are important to you, but I mean what are you really passionate about?"

He got me to thinking and you know what? He was right. I wanted to say that I love web development and affiliate marketing, and running our publishing business. But those aren't passions. I'm certainly not passionate about women's shoes, or halloween costumes, or any of the other topics that make us money.

We hear it all the time. I say it all the time.

"If you want to be successful, create a website or blog around a passion."

But I don't do that.

My God, what am I passionate about? I don't know!

I love skiing and golfing. I'm really good at the former and really bad at the latter. But I don't want to become an expert in either enough to make it a project that I try to become an online expert in and create a blog. I'm certainly any sort of authority in either.

I love coffee, and I tried that in the form of a podcast but that cooled off. (My fault. Sorry Todd.)

I love web development, technology, gadgets, and the promise of the Internet in changing our lives. But that's just too broad. Anyway, I tried that too and it failed as well.

Then there's photography. I've got an artistic side, and I love taking pictures. But likewise, photography is a technical skill that I'm just not any sort of authority on. And it takes years of study to get there.

WTF!

Is having a passion really that rare? Is it possible that I don't actually have one?

But as I was snapping photos on my iPhone the other day, I realized that there's something amazing happening there. I'm using a camera that's also a computer with an operating system. There's a whole army of people developing apps for my camera to make it easy for me to improve my pictures and then share them immediately with the world.

What an awesome thing. And I do it every day without even realizing it.

I'm always, even subconsciously, looking for that perfect shot to capture on my iPhone, thinking about how I can grab it in my little pocket camera and tweak it with the software in there.

There's nothing more satisfying to me than grabbing the perfect shot of my kids, a stranger, a branch on a tree, a cookie...

...and having the vision to apply the right post-processing to turn a plain cameraphone picture into something that might even be considered artistic.

I think maybe this is a passion that I didn't even realize I had.

Taking pictures on my iPhone is the perfect mix of geek, social media, art, Internet, and technology. I think maybe I am lucky enough to have a passion.

Phonetography

So over this Christmas break, I set up Phonetography.com.

It is a blog about taking special photographs with a mediocre camera, making them great with fun software, and sharing them with the world. All in an instant.

If you've got a camera phone and like to use it, then Phonetography is for you. I hope you'll join me there, subscribe to the feed and newsletter, and participate in the discussion.

Or just follow along as an Internet marketer and entrepreneur starts a new website from scratch.

Do you have a passion? I mean really have a passion? If you're lucky enough to answer yes, are you doing something with it?

Awesome surprise delivered by the UPS guy today.

Return address was ShareASale and from the shape of the package, I was afraid hoping it would be a lifesize image of Brian Littleton tending goal.

Instead, it was a massive check that any online money-making guru would be proud to stand behind, congratulating us for being in the ShareASale Top 1%.

The only thing missing is Ed McMahon.

(This is what I'm supposed to do with this, right?)

Thanks guys. I see it's post-dated for the 31st. I won't try to cash it until next week.

Story behind the story

I'm sure many of these went out and I wanted to be the first to get it posted. But I'm alone with the kids today on their vacation week. So I set up my three-year-old who is now officially a budding photographer.

Obviously my SLR camera was unavailable so I took this picture with my iPhone with which, coincidentally, I've been having a blast taking pictures. So much so that I've started a iPhone photography blog called "Phonetography". Catchy eh? More on that later.

From Today' NY Times:

Op-Ed Contributor - Search, but You May Not Find - NYTimes.com: "Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's new Bing have become the Internet's gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include 'search neutrality': the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance."

It looks like Foundem's founder Adam Raff is on a tear. He's also started the website and blog, SearchNeutrality.org which further supports his position he wrote about in the Times.

He makes some great points. Good for Adam for getting this in front of the world via the Times.

Google definitely has the amazing and unprecedented ability to own any market it wishes by simply pinning their own resource at the top search result.

After reading this, I can't help but think that Search Neutrality is inevitable. What do you think?

Are you wondering who won previous years? See here for my Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award Cliff's Notes.

Here are the finalists for the Pinnacle Awards at Affiliate Summit West 2010, all linked up for easy checking out...

Affiliate of the Year

Nicholas Koscianski (aka Nickycakes)
Eric Nagel (ericnagel.com)
Kim Rowley (ShoppingBookmarks, ShoeaholicsAnonymous)

Affiliate Manager of the Year

Jamie Birch
Stephanie Harris of Schaaf Consulting
Matt McWilliams

Exceptional Merchant

Amazon.com
BowlingShirt.com
eBay Partner Network

Affiliate Marketing Advocate

Angel Djambazov
Karen Garcia
Rebecca Madigan - Performance Marketing Association

Best Blogger

Murray Newlands - murraynewlands.com
Geno Prussakov - Affiliate Marketing Blog
Jeremy Schoemaker - Shoemoney

Affiliate Marketing Legend

Today is a big day for awards in the affiliate marketing space.

ShareASale announced their Annual Performance Award winners for 2009.

Exceptional Affiliate: StyleFeeder
Exceptional Merchant: Vann's
Exceptional Affiliate Manager: Jared Saunders of JensonUSA
PowerRank Champ: Checks Unlimited
Emerging Technology: Spadout
Pay it Forward:

Karen Garcia, Industry Advocate
Scott Jangro, Industry Advocate
Michael Coley, Education

I'm proud to be in there for a "Pay it Forward" award. It'll be even more fun to be on deck to hand out the award next year.

Next up, Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award Finalists...

If you haven't been paying attention, Google's been busy experimenting with showing product images and shopping results more prominently in search results.

Yesterday Adam Viener posted an eye-opening screenshot of Google Search results. A search for USB extension cable showed search results containing a very skewed list of search results.

In Adam's example, PC Connection's products garnered three top spots in the sponsored listings. From Adam's perspective as a search affiliate, this raises some questions about the availability of ad space to businesses like his.

Here's another example where Zappos pwns the search results page.

Angel Djambazov asked Google Affiliate Network team about the recent changes to the search results page and got the following response:

We can confirm that the product listing ads beta discussed in Adam's piece is being facilitated by the Google Affiliate Network platform. At Google, we're constantly experimenting with new features, tools and visual representations to improve the user experience and usefulness of our ads. In accordance with that philosophy, we're beta testing a new format to show richer product information, including images, prices and product titles in the ads for shopping-related queries. This test is part of a limited beta and not available to all advertisers at this time.

What do you think of these trends?

Are you misleading consumers who visit your website? You don't think so? I bet the guys at Intercept, LLC didn't think so either. Or at least they didn't worry about it.

Don't Mess With Texas

The Attorney General of the State of Texas, Greg Abbot, announced on Monday, Cyber Monday no less, that they've taken legal action against Intercept (and a second company, Everyprice.com) for misleading consumers.

The Charges

The issue is that these companies on several price comparison websites have represented to consumers that they are promising independent, reliable, and trustworthy information about online retailers when in fact retailers are paying for higher rankings.

The charges are that these companies have misled consumers describing merchants as reliable and trustworthy while representing themselves as neutral and unbiased. They have been using words like "Trusted", "Recommended", "Lowest legitimate price", and "Customer certified" to describe merchants when, as the attorney general asserts, these labels are in fact for sale not earned.

The Outcome

The prosecutors won an injunction.

According to Abbott, Intercept has agreed to cease this practice and pay $300,000 or cease business operations entirely in the State of Texas, which in practical terms means everywhere.

As such, Intercept has taken all of their websites offline, including Shopcartusa.com, Diduprice.com, Flyingprices.com, Digitalsaver.com and Pricingdepot.com. I guess $300,000 was too steep a price to pay.

How bad is bad?

I'd like to think that the offenses were egregious and deserving of such attention and prosecution. At the very least, they pissed someone off in Texas. Unfortunately, now that the sites are down, we cannot look to see exactly how the websites operated.

I don't know if it is related, but searching the Google for "ShopcartUSA" turns up no shortage of consumer accusations of "scams" by this company. Case in point:

I would like to say that I was a naive consumer when I went online to purchase a Nikon D200. I could only wish I had come across this website before expending much time and frustration in my persuit of finding a low priced D200. Yes, I am guilty of going on ShopCartUSA and falling for the BS of the low priced merchants (all in Brooklyn I may add). (source)

Make enough enemies like this and I guess this sort of action is a disaster in the making.

Check Yourself

The lesson here is pretty clear, watch how you represent information on your websites.

On the surface, these accusations sound a lot like the sort of behavior that many (many) publishers may be toeing the line on (or crossing it) without even knowing it.

Watch the video of the press conference held in TX on Monday.

Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Moments for this Decade -
Attorney General Abbott Charges Price-Comparison Web Sites With Misleading Shoppers, Taking Payments for Higher Ratings
The FTC's Blogger Witch-Hunt Has Begun
Merchant Communication from AffiliateAdvocacy

ShareASale Blog Blog Archive Affiliate Interface Timesavers - Checking when Datafeeds are Updated -
Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Moments of Last 10 Years | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins -
Just Another Cyber Monday | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins -
FTC on Guidelines, Affiliate Disclosures, Compliance Affiliate Marketing Blog -
Cyber Monday 2009 Statistics Affiliate Marketing Blog -

A few years ago, I wrote about what I called "Soft SEO". I feel that there are squishier things that the all-knowing Google uses for ranking websites.

In addition to the all-important onsite (meta data, keyword-rich content, header tags) and offsite (inbound links, authoritative mentions) there is likely more to what matters in getting your site to be amongst the top ten of all websites in the world for any given search result.

I guess that google is also paying close attention to bounce rates and time on site. If people click on a search result and quickly return for another, then it must not have been a good experience.

And down it goes.

I haven't read anything specific to validate these thoughts, though I have seen anecdotal evidence to support these theories (though that's all they are).

Anthropomorphizing Google

When we work on the SEO for our websites, we often give Google human characteristics. We treat it like a intelligent being. But not too intelligent. We frequently have discussions about our websites and their structure that contain terms like, "We're confusing Google with this," and "Let's be patient. It's digesting all the changes, it needs to sort it all out."

Anthropomorphizing Google (or thinking of Google's systems as "human") helps us get above the simple algorithmic thinking about how many keywords and links are required and more toward the advanced multi-variate factors that all contribute to good search engine rankings. Since Google won't tell us what the factors actually are, if we treat the search engine like a thinking being, what's important to Google and what's important to users converge.

And that's a good thing.

What is Google Actually Telling us?

If you pay attention to what the folks at Google ARE saying, you can start to get the idea that they are looking at many different ways to determine the value of a website.

Today, Google announced that site hierarchies display in search results. Clearly they're looking at how navigation works in a website, and now they're displaying navigation in search results in some cases instead of URLs.

What if they can't make sense of your site structure? It's not the end of the world, but it certainly isn't helping your case.

And recently, there's been lots of discussion over something that Matt Cutts said about site speed and performance in an interview.

How long before Google's telling us how long it takes for our pages to load in their Webmaster tools? Slow sites cause unhappy users and bounces. And Google's paying attention.

In the past several months, it seems that it has been really easy for publishers to get top placement in google with some pretty basic keyword stuffing strategies, like buying domains with exact targeted keyword phrases in them, or worse.

Google preaches, design for users and the rest will follow, but these examples make that really difficult to swallow, and does nothing but encourage the opposite behavior.

Keyword Stuffed Domains

We saw this over and over again this year in the halloween costume space, like this site ranks #1 in Google for Alice in Wonderland Costume

And this site ranks number 2 for Pirate Costume in google.

There are dozens if not hundreds of that specific example, and they made a killing this year. (They're a merchant, not an affiliate btw.)

They may not last at the top spots much longer, but they probably don't even care. Mission accomplished.

I'm not judging the sites in question. I do have to wonder if this is really what Google wants at the top of their search results. (OK, maybe I'm judging a little.)

Spam Blogs and Redirects

Here's another, dkny accalia, which is a certain model of shoe.

The sites in spots 2 and 3 both redirect to the same website. Spots 4 through 8 are broken sites, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that they were also doing the same (based on the domains).

Redirects? Seriously? We don't know what these domains had on them before to get these ranks, but there's little doubt in my mind that they were keyword stuffing. Actually the 8th site has a Google cached page, it's a spammy wordpress blog. That DNKY Accalia post was from October 5th.

They got the ranks within a few weeks and then redirect it to an affiliate landing page, in this case with links to Amazon.

Where are the Good Guys?

Where'd the guys end up that design for users?

Oh here they are on Page 2...

I wonder how Stylefeeder, theFind, like.com, ProntoStyle, BizRate, etc. feel about their White-hat ways when stuff like this happens for even a few weeks in the prime holiday shopping season.

What's going on?

Will these guys stay in these spots forever? Probably not (though the costume guys have been holding on for months now).

Is Google under so much pressure to produce real-time search results that they're leaving the back door open again to spammers?

Maybe this has been around for a while now, but it's new to me.

I would guess that the viewing of this video doesn't actually cost Verizon (the advertiser) anything unless someone actually clicks through the ad.

This is some great free branding for Verizon.

I received this question to the Ask Jangro submission form a week or so ago...

Isn't this an affiliate? http://twitter.com/kindle_book

Here's the site:

It's a twitter account that appears to echo an RSS feed of all the new books available on the Kindle. This twitter user has almost 3000 followers. Surely some of those are bots, but not all.

And yes, that twitter account is run by an Amazon Associate. You can tell by the parameter in all the links, like this:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002SRL3D6/?tag=gkindle-20

The question continues...

Why does Amazon arbitrarily choose whom to crack down on and whom not to? From anecdotal evidence, it seems that Amazon's affiliate managers have a lot of discretion as to whom to suspend, and they let their personal and political biases show in their suspension-notification emails.

Since I haven't seen any suspension-notification emails that demonstrate personal or political bias, I cannot really comment on that.

Amazon and Twitter

Perhaps you are referring to the buzz that went around this past summer where Amazon refused to compensate on traffic referred through a twitter link.

After dozens of bloggers wrote about the issue chastising Amazon, it started to become clear that Amazon isn't patently against their associates promoting through Twitter. They just insist that any sites where their links are posted are approved by Amazon.

Shawn Collins recently posted his interaction with Amazon on this exact issue, where Amazon approved his Twitter account for him to post affiliate links.

And just today, Amazon just announced their "Share on Twitter" feature to Amazon Associates.

Amazon does allow links on Twitter and other third party blogging and microblogging platforms. Actually, I just noticed that Amazon now has a whole Social Media FAQ.

Finally, to address the question, "Why does Amazon arbitrarily choose whom to crack down on and whom not to?"

Again, I may not have all the evidence that you are looking at, but I suspect that this may only seem arbitrary. We've seen that Amazon will crack down on sites that aren't approved to run links. Without knowing that rule, it may seem random.

Beyond that, Amazon surely looks at whether a publisher is adding value in their eyes. That by definition is arbitrary. Affiliate managers everywhere must use their discretion when approving and denying affiliates. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.

Is it always fair? Probably not. But as my 8th grade Social Studies teacher used to say, "Life isn't fair."

If you've got a specific case, ask Amazon about it. Shawn Collins had a pretty reasonable exchange with them. I'd think you could too.

Does It Add Value?

The acid test that I like to ask about any affiliate model is "value", to the consumer and to the advertiser. So let's look at this twitter account under the "value lens".

I'd say that on the surface, this is a good way for people who like to consume their news on Twitter to find out about new kindle books.

As long as this twitter account isn't being spammy, I don't really see anything wrong with it. If only hundreds of those followers are real people, they're following for a reason.

This publisher may want to put some disclosure on this page in light of the new FTC endorsement guides that were published recently.

Seems to pass the value test to me. What do you think?

If you've got a topic or question you'd like me to address here on AffBook.com, please contact me.

Like most people, I've been wishing for lists for as long as twitter has been around.

And now that the feature is available, I love it.

But what I didn't think about is the impact that public lists would have on Twitter.

The problem with lists:

1. As soon as a list is created, it is out of date.2. Lists are exclusive. There will always be people left out.

These things became obvious to me as I started to create my own public list called Affiliorati. The idea was not to make a list of everybody in affiliate marketing (there are several of those), but to make a list of those who write or talk about the affiliate marketing industry itself, either on twitter, blogs, podcasts, conferences panels, etc.

I realize that it probably sounds elitist, but that's not my intention. I like to pay attention to the people who think about the industry itself and through words and action have a direct impact on it.

As I started building that list I realized that I cannot possibly create the perfect list that includes everyone it should. With all my best efforts it is a certainty that people will be left off.

Last week, while I was building this list and examining many affiliate lists, I noticed that I was on some of them and not on others. Tongue firmly in cheek, I posted the following.

This resulted in some funny replies, mostly people who came to my defense, and one who told me to get a life. ( there was no @jangro, but I'm guessing that was at least partially directed at me.)

I do expect that there are probably some real hurt feelings over list exclusions out there.

Not that my Affiliorati list is all that and a bag of chips, but if you feel like I left someone off, please let me know.

Curated Lists

I've been seeing the word "curator" a lot in the past week as people get excited about lists, which is an interesting term used mostly in regards to art or museum collections. If you've got people following a list that you're in charge of, they're putting some faith in you that you'll provide the care and feeding.

List Quality

How do we know that a list is good? I know first-hand that my own "curated list" is only the result of my efforts to find good twitter users for about 30 minutes. I haven't done anything since then.

By virtue of who I am, what I've called the list, and who is on it so far, someone might have the expectation that it is better than it really is. I do hope to make it a great list but without good tools for finding new list members, and removing some misfits, I don't have much hope.

I bet that 99% of lists out there were built quickly and will remain static.

I see the need for tools that will cross-reference many lists on a subject to ensure quality. Curation tools, if you will. TLISTS sounds like it might be such a tool when it is available.

According to George Michie of The Rimm-Kaufman Group, there are two types of coupon affiliates, and I paraphrase:

The Worthy: Those who have a loyal following and through promotion to their own clients send incremental sales to advertiser sites.

The Worthless: Coupon sites that earn their commissions primarily through capturing brand traffic, like "merchantname coupons" and "brandname deals".

His assertion is that the in the latter case, most sales likely would have happened anyway. Those affiliates don't drive many incremental sales and are therefore worth less, or nothing.

Are you worthy? Prove it!

George therefore posed a challenge to Coupon Affiliates:

I propose a test: Coupon affiliates can easily prove their value simply by capturing the referrer string from visitors to their site (showing the last page the visitor was on prior to arriving at the affiliate's site ??" including a search string if relevant) and appending it as a parameter when that traffic passes from the affiliate's site to the advertiser's. The advertisers could then see what fraction of affiliate orders come from people looking for the advertiser by name and what fraction got to the affiliate site by something other than brand search.

It'll be a cold day in hell before any publisher voluntarily appends the referring natural search traffic to clicks to the merchant and I don't anticipate that ANY publisher will take George up on this challenge. Neither does he, I'm sure.

(hint: Merchants, you don't need affiliates to help you out here. You can figure this out for yourself with some analytics.)

But what if you Coupon Affiliates put yourself to the test in the privacy of your own mind? How would you do?

If you come up on George's scale on the side of worthless, don't just shrug it off with a "FU George". I think this is a sentiment that is becoming more and more common among advertisers as coupons become more and more sought-after by consumers.

You'll soon start feeling some pressure to add some more value.

BTW, "value" is in the eye of the one paying the money. It doesn't matter what you think.

You can either change what you're doing. Or change the perception of your worth by speaking up.

Photo Credit: Zazzle

Many states will be heating up the legislation process on the Affiliate Tax, including the ones who couldn't pull it off last year. It's pretty much a guarantee that we'll be seeing another attempt from California, Connecticut, Hawaii, as well as many new ones.

Early Buzz

From Melanie Seery at AffiliateAdvocacy yesterday.

Internet sales tax talk is already gaining momentum in several states. In Florida, Senator Nancy Detert has announced that she is continuing to research requiring merchants to collect sales tax on online sales. It appears likely that legislation will be introduced in Florida during the upcoming legislative session

...Affiliates in Florida and other states should prepare for pending legislation that will clearly require out of state merchants to collect sales tax. The 2010 legislative session will keep us busy as several states have announced that they will introduce legislation. Affiliate Advocacy will continue to monitor the activity.

And from Rebecca Madigan at the PMA.

"For the second time in several weeks, Florida newspapers have reported on legislators wanting to tax internet sales. DON'T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS JUST YET. I've spoken to multiple lobbyists and policy experts about Florida, and there is no clear indication this has anything to do with an affiliate-targeting advertising tax. This mostly likely has to do with the streamlined sales tax, which would allow charging sales tax on all internet sales. Our experts strongly believe Florida will NOT implement an advertising tax because their financial leaders strongly support a streamlined sales tax approach."

These appear on the surface as opposing viewpoints, and it would be unfortunate if things escalate in that direction, distracting from the real issues.

Instead, let's look at the important message from both of these posts.

Stay informed, be proactive in understanding your state's legislative climate, and be ready to take action. But also make sure you go with the right message. When you talk to legislators and even your fellow affiliate marketers, you can have the best impact if you're well prepared and understand the lay of the land in that state.

Is Internet Sales Tax is Inevitable?

Many people think so.

The important question is, how will it be implemented? There's a bad way that causes affiliate marketers harm. And there are other ways that cause no direct harm to affiliate marketers.

I'm thinking that our energy and limited resources is best spent on just making sure that affiliate marketers aren't harmed. The fight against Internet sales tax is infinitely larger and probably not one we want to focus on.

What about Florida?

Is there an imminent threat to affiliate marketers in Florida? I don't know, though the experts seem to think not so far.

Is it worth talking to your Florida legislators anyway? Sure. But if you go in speaking against legislation that doesn't exist, you might not get as far as if you go in asking questions and getting a feel for where things are heading.

From the sounds of things, it is possible that we as affiliate marketers may want to actually support the direction they're headed in Florida, or at least not fight it against it.

Follow a discussion on this at ABW in the Florida Affiliate Tax forum.

Disclosure: I am on the board of directors at the PMA. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the PMA.

Later in 2006, Shawn Collins and Missy Ward announced the Annual Pinnacle Awards to recognize the best in the industry. The first was presented at Affiliate Summit West in 2007.

Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards History

Affiliate Summit West 2006: Wayne Porter, Affiliate Summit Legend AwardAffiliate Summit East 2006: Tim Storm, Wayne Porter Affiliate Summit Legend Award
.awards td {
padding: 5px;
font: .9em "Lucida Grande", Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif;
}
.winner {
font-weight:bold;
color:red;
}

Winners marked in red.

  3rd Annual Pinnacle AwardsJan 12, 2009Rio Hotel, Las Vegas

  2nd Annual Pinnacle AwardsFeb 25, 2008Rio Hotel, Las Vegas

  1st Annual Pinnacle AwardsJan 22, 2007Wynn Hotel, Las Vegas



  Affiliate of the Year
  Scott AikinMike AllenKim Rowley
  Mike AllenConnie BergTim Storm
  Anne FognanoMichael ColeyScott Hazard


  Affiliate Manager of the Year
  Angel DjambazovStephanie HarrisKim Salvino
  Stephanie HarrisMelissa SalasCarolyn Tang
  Jamie BirchAngel DjambazovSam Osborn


  Exceptional Merchant
  4Checks.comAmazonCelebrateExpress.com
  Amazon.comCSN StoresSierra Trading Post
  AmazoneBayOnlineShoes.com


  Affiliate Marketing Advocate
  Michael ColeyBrook SchaafMelanie Seery
  Haiko de Poel, Jr.Scott JangroRevenue Magazine
  Linda BuquetBen EdelmanBrian Littleton


  Best Blogger
  Jamie BirchAngel DjambazovScott Jangro
  Carsten CumbrowskiSam HarrelsonJeremy Schoemaker
  Scott JangroBeth KirschJim Kukral


  Wayne Porter Affiliate Marketing Legend
  Connie BergScott JangroKellie Stevens
  Connie BergHaiko de Poel, Jr.Brian Littleton
  Todd CrawfordHaiko de Poel, Jr.Brian Littleton

Multiple Awards

Angel Djambazov: 2
Brian Littleton: 2

Multiple Nominations

Scott Jangro: 4 (1 win)
Brian Littleton: 3 (2 wins)
Connie Berg: 3 (1 win)
Haiko de Poel, Jr.: 3 (1 win)
Amazon: 3 (1 win)
Mike Allen: 2 (1 win)
Michael Coley: 2 (1 win)
Angel Djambazov: 2 (2 wins)
Jamie Birch: 2 (0 wins)
Stephanie Harris: 2 (0 wins)

4th Annual Pinnacle Awards

The 4th Annual Awards will be presented on Tuesday, January 19th at the Rio in Las Vegas.
Who will it be this year? As always, it is up to you!

Nominations for the 4th Annual Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards are open until November 30, 2009.

I think I've finally recovered from the flurry of activity as well as the jetlag to muster up a post about ShareASale ThinkTank.

Somehow I managed to squeeze the following into four days:

Flew from Boston to Long Beach, CA
Attended an ALCS baseball game (Yankees vs. Angels), perhaps the most amazing baseball game I've ever seen in person.
Played 36 holes of golf on Pelican Hill's Ocean North and Ocean South golf courses. Both courses were named by GOLF Magazine in 2002 as two of the "Top 100 Courses You Can Play in America". GOLF Magazine also named the North course's 17th hole as one of the "Best Holes in the World." I concur.
Took a twilight cruise around Newport Harbor with some friends for dinner. Thank you MrMackin!
Attended a top-notch, two-day conference. Met with a ton of great people.
Played another 18 holes (36 wasn't enough)
Flew home.

Fortunately, I waited long enough for some others to write up some great posts.

If I was going to write an entire detailed post, it would look a lot like this one from Joe Sousa:

Shareasale ThinkTank09: Epic Win!

Since I spent most of the time there with him, it pretty much covers my entire time. Great to see you Joe, as always.

Here are some other great posts:

Matt McWilliams. (plus some great pics here.)
Missy Ward
Ian Fernando
Shawn Collins
Logan Thompson

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Amazing conference, as always. Thanks Brian and ShareASale!

Today, Melanie Seery, president of AffiliateVoice, LLC announced that the name of the organization has changed to AffiliateAdvocacy and that the Board of Directors has dissolved.

As an affiliate marketer in the States, the past few months is a busy travel time for me every year. It starts with Linkshare Symposium in June, Google Affiliate Network Client Summit in July, Affiliate Summit in August, CJU in September, Blogworld Expo (skipped this year, too much travel) and ShareaSale ThinkTank in October.

Given that our holiday season ends on Halloween around here, September and October is a really bad time for the guy who keeps the servers running to be jetting around the country.

This past Saturday night, I was out in Newport Beach, CA at the awesome ShareASale event. At 10pm, I was hanging out at the bar waiting for a poker game to materialize when I got a text message that Costumzee.com was unresponsive. I quickly tried to load the site on my iPhone and it didn't, so I bolted back to my room. I logged into the server and was reminded that the big weekly backup happens on Sunday morning at 1 am ET. It's usually not a problem, but the extra halloween load was too much for the servers to handle the backups AND the traffic. The problem was over pretty quickly.

Thanks to monitoring services, I'm usually able to respond quickly to any issues. Here's how the interactions usually go with my business partner.

Damien serves very well as a monitoring service himself, usually very close to the monitoring services. But he does sleep once in a while.

Monitoring Serivces That Don't Sleep

The service that I've used for years to get alerts when there are site issues is Montastic. It's a free service that pings your servers every 30 minutes.

Actually, I noticed recently that it hasn't been it's usual "Johnny on the spot" and logged in to investigate. It turns out that they've updated the service to add some fee-based options, and at the same time updated their default check frequency to once every 6 hours! If you use montastic, you might want to go set that back down to a more frequent check.

At this point, I decided that it's probably time that I pay for this service and get more frequent checks than every 30 minutes. I thought I'd check out a few.

Yesterday, after hunting around, I signed up for Pingdom.com, a Swedish based service that looks a bit more polished than Montastic. Of course you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I can't lie, it certainly makes a difference. (You listening BL?)

The paid versions of both services will get you monitoring every 30-60 seconds. Pingdom offers more functionality such as uptime tracking, logs, various reports, even an iPhone app, so you can see what's been going on and look for issues and trends as well as get alerted in real time. Here I discover that shoehunting.com had a brief problem last night at 1am (again, those pesky database backups!)

Pingdom will send email, SMS, and even a tweet if it detects a problem. A "problem" is defined by you as x consecutive failed checks. I didn't get an alert for that one failure last night. Also, they're pretty stingy with the SMS alerts (20 per month in the basic plan), but most providers have an email address that will forward to your phone's SMS so I just set up a second contact for that.

If you make any money at all on your websites, it is probably worth paying for a service. At the very least you should sign up for a free one.

Coupons are a pretty big deal these days (understatement of the year).

Even the Schaffer brothers Steve and Howard got their own Offers.com mentioned in a TechCrunch article yesterday. Techcrunch covering a coupon site? Really? There's the power of a great domain name. And Steve's ability to get press. Well done guys.

In a timely fashion for this holiday season, yesterday, Linkshare announced a new coupon API for their affiliate publishers.

To sign up for their coupon API, go into the Web Services section of the Publisher Dashboard:

Coupon and promotion management is one feature that has never seemed to evolve to its potential in the affiliate space. At first glance, this one seems to be up there in functionality.

I was chatting with fellow publisher Michael Coley of Amazing-Bargains.com recently about network coupon solutions and reminiscing about the old Be Free Offer Management system, which I affectionately refer to as the industry's best coupon management system to ever land in the trash heap.

sigh

It had features AND an editorial process that enforced quality.

The Wildcard is Data Quality

Lest we get too excited. Everything hinges on data quality.

Merchants can sometimes get overzealous with what they put into a coupon management system and without good policies and enforcement, the whole thing could be useless. That's worth highlighting.

Without good coupon data policies and enforcement, a coupon system is useless.

Merchants tend to push the limits of what constitutes an "offer" and "coupon" just to get their products out there. My favorite was one that we rejected in the old Be Free days that went something like this, "Send your Thanksgiving cards with Stamps from stamps.com." There were dozens of them. Seriously.

Data quality within fields is critical as well.

For example, with a single offer description field, merchants may try to put a lot of information in there. But publishers need that plus a short title. With only one description field, most publishers will need to hand-manage this data before it can be included on a website.

Offer restrictions is an area that can get complicated as well, and without good structure around how these are specified, it will unlikely be formatted in a way that can be easily automated. For example, many advertisers have restrictions on certain product Ids or brands. If this is written in plain text, it can easily be included in the offer presented to the user. But if I have an advanced coupon system and want to not even show coupons for the products it doesn't apply to, there may be manual work involved in handling the coupons.

I'm glad to see new solutions appear that address some of the major pain points of offer management. At a first glance, this one appears to have many of the critical elements that have been lacking. If you like to geek out on API stuff, here are the juicy details...

Features
REST based
Linkshare's APIs are a REST-based Web Service. You make a simple API call with a single URL with several name-value pairs in it. As far as web services go, this is about as simple as it gets. You'll need to be able to deal with XML, which falls in the "advanced web develeopment" category.

?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?
couponfeed
  link type="TEXT"
    categories
      category id="983"computers/category
      category id="12"electronics/category
      category id="14"gifts/category
    /categories
  promotiontypes
    promotiontype id="22"percentage off/promotiontype
  /promotiontypes
  offerdescription15 percent off/offerdescription
  offerstartdate2009-04-01/offerstartdate
  offerenddate2009-05-31/offerenddate
  couponcodeKJEISLD/couponcode
  couponrestrictionNew Customers Only/couponrestriction
  clickurlhttp://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=XXXXXXXXXXXofferid=164317.10002595type=4subid=0/clickurl
  impressionpixelhttp://ad.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/show?id=XXXXXXXXXXXbids=164317.10002595type=4subid=0impressionpixel
  advertiserid000/advertiserid
  advertisernameSample Advertiser Name/advertisername
  network id="1"Linkshare Network/network
  /link
/couponfeed

Query Options
You can retrieve coupons by querying on a few different paramaters, Category, Promotion Type, Network, and Merchant ID. Multiple parameters and values per parameter can be requested.
Categories
Coupons are categorized in their vertical, such as Travel Vacations, Toys Games, Sports Fitness, Software Downloads, Shoes, etc. I presume that these categories are specified by the advertiser per coupon.
Promotion Types.
There is a rich set of promotion types. Here's the list that I'm getting

Percentage off
Other
Gift with Purchase
General Promotion
Friends and Family
Free Trial / Usage
Free Shipping
Dollar Amount off
Deal of the Day/Week
Combination Savings
Clearance
Buy One / Get One

Included Data
Most of the important data elements appear to be included. In addition to category and promotion types, there's an offer description, start date, end date, coupon code, restrictions, and all of the necessary image, impression, and click URLs.

All this talk makes me want to launch a new coupon site.

Yesterday I aired a gripe about online newspapers not putting links to the websites that they're talking about in their stories. (Thanks for all the retweets and comments!)

Did you find yourself wondering what kind of traffic one might get from a small story in a big print news source's online version?

Wonder no more. Here's the traffic we got from the online version of the boston.com post. That was as of this morning. There will obviously be some more traffic today and over the next few days, but you get the idea.

Here's the traffic that we got from Time.com a few years ago.

I can't show you the Staten Island news traffic because they didn't link to me and I don't see referrer information in reports. (But look at what the Boston Globe and Time Magazine did and you can do the math.)

There are few actual visitors from online news sources. (Not including front-page stories, I'm sure.)

But here's what really matters.

Google reads every one of them.
If there's a link in there, the value is huge.
If there's no link in there, the value is relatively small.

That and I can show my mom what a success her son has become.

Our halloween costume website has received a few press mentions so far this season, thanks to having a PR person on the case and resources like HARO (Help a Reporter, great service from Peter Shankman, check it out.)

It's exciting to see our name in print, and I know that every press mention is a great benefit to our business and brand. But at the risk of being accused of looking a gift horse in the mouth, I'm going to gripe for a minute here in hopes that awareness will improve the HARO information economy.

And here it is:

Is it me or are newspaper websites way stingy with their links?

Like this one:

Staten Island Advance - HOMEMADE HALLOWEEN DECK: Scare up some savings this holiday by with these do-it-yourself children's costumes

This is a great article, and some good coverage for us (and I'm not complaining about that.) But wouldn't it be useful to their readers to be able to click through on just one of the mentions of the website talked about in the article? They literally suggest that their readers go check out a website but they have to type in the URL.

Quid Pro Quo

I'm not pretending for a minute that I'm just looking out for the readers. Of course I'm interested in getting a link from a newspaper. Because that's a REALLY good link. But that's just the point. A newspaper felt that we were cool enough to talk about us, but from a search engine "PageRank" and "TrustRank" perspective it's lost.

This is what is in it for me.

I realize that the newspapers don't care about this, but they need to. I spend a good amount of time on the phone with reporters and even follow up with information, photos, etc. They get some pretty great articles (I hope they think so), some quotes, and some fun stuff to share with their readers.

I really don't want much in return. Just a little link.

Otherwise, HARO becomes less cool.

Learn From the Good Ones

They're not all bad. Here's a great one:

Boston.com - Trick or Treat Deals

And here's the best one ever: Hurricane Hannah (a few years old.)

What's ironic is that Time.com and Boston.com reporters surely have people falling at their feet. And somehow they manage to give a good experience to their readers AND give something to the website that helped make the story.

Thank you Time.com and Boston.com. I'm sure your readers thank you too.

I'll happily HARO you any time!

Ian Fernando is spending his money so we don't have to.

Ian did a really interesting test this weekend on a topic near and dear to me... halloween costumes He tested out pushing costumes via Facebook ads and he learned something. Cost per sale (CPS) is a really tough way to make money on Facebook.

Even after an impressive array of split tests and targeting tweaks, he couldn't make it pay. He spent about $200 to make $16. A failed campaign by any standard.

In my mind, some of this failure has to do with Facebook in general. Some of this has to do with the costume space. Let's look at both.

Halloween Costume Traffic is Tricky

Everybody is looking for costume ideas right now, and while there are plenty of people buying costumes, most people are just looking for a great idea on what to be for halloween. This translates into lots of lookers, which is the kiss of death for paid traffic.

In my business, we've essentially been forced to stop buying costume traffic this year. Between affiliates figuring this out for themselves the hard way, and the incredible influx of costume merchants driving up prices, the margins are gone.

This year, more than ever, if you have to buy traffic, you'll be making Google, the merchants, and even American Express, more money than yourself. But hey there's always Membership Rewards points.

Facebook is for Branding

For the most part, people on Facebook are not shopping. They're interacting.

It is simply too easy to get people to click on Facebook with a very targeted ad. Ian showed a Dexter costume to Dexter fans. What Dexter fan with Halloween on the brain isn't going to go take a look at a Dexter costume? Especially if you show them a small thumbnail with the promise of seeing it in full detail behind a click. Even with a high conversion due to the targeting, the lookers will click away any profit that you might have had.

There are some things that Ian might have done to dissuade the lookers. One commenter suggested that he put a price in the ad. Good idea. I'd also suggest changing the language to, "Buy a Dexter Costume" instead of "Come take a look at the officially licensed costume". But even with these changes, or any changes, it's too much to overcome.

Ian can also do MUCH better than 10% for costumes, but even if he can squeeze twice that out of a merchant, it's not enough. His current EPC is off by more than 10x for profitability.

It takes an incredibly high EPC to make money with CPS on Facebook. The offers exist, but they're not low-ticket items like halloween costumes.

There is a branding benefit at play here, but Ian is paying for the merchant to gain it. This increases the chances that the visitor will eventually purchase from that merchant.

The good news is that Ian is getting a tracking cookie set for each of the visitors, and there will be some longer-term lift to his numbers if he had the luxury of waiting for the return visits (most halloween merchants have 30 or more return days). But even though the branding brought the buyer, he still may not get the sale...

It's the Economy

Add the economic situation onto all this. More than in recent years people are either making their own costumes or are shopping around for coupons or the best deal they can get. So even if Ian delivered a buyer to the merchant he was promoting. The chances that buyer will be lost to another affiliate from deal and coupon hunting is higher than ever.

Thanks for taking one for the team Ian!

Disclosure: I own the website (costumzee.com) behind a few of the costume links in this post.

Dear Mr. Chairman:

So there I was last Saturday, about to send out on my Twitter feed -- which automatically updates my Facebook page and links to my personal blog -- a photograph of this wonderful baked halibut dish I'd just made as a surprise for my wife. I was in the middle of typing a rave review of the recipe, which I'd pulled from my favorite cookbook, Delicioso! The Regional Cooking of Spain by Penelope Casas. But before I could press the "post" button, I stopped and canceled the whole thing.

I remembered that the book was a freebie, sent to me by an editor at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house 13 years ago. And I didn't want you guys to haul me into court and fine me for violating the rules you've just promulgated to muzzle social media.

He goes on... Read the whole letter on the IAB website.

I don't know what his problem is, all he had to do is explain that he got the book for free 13 years prior somewhere in the 140 characters available in his Tweet.

And why didn't he send the book back in the first place? That's what all real journalists do.

And Mr. Rothenberg must not have felt it was appropriate to put an affiliate link in there.

Well, someone had to do it. And of course I must disclose.

Affiliate Disclosure: I don't endorse the book in the above post, in fact I've never even held it in my hands. But Randall Rothenberg seems to like it an awful a lot. In any case, if you click on one of those links in this second-hand, reluctant endorsement and purchase that book from Amazon (or anything from Amazon for that matter), I (not Randall) will be compensated by Amazon with real cash money.

Have you created a Facebook Fan page yet?

If not, why not? Here's twelve reasons why you should.

Why You Need a Facebook Fan Page...
1. To many people, Facebook is the Internet. If you're not there, you're nowhere. (We need to help them.)

1. Social proof. Get a lot of fans and it looks good on you. (As opposed to me and my four fans, including myself. Help!)

2. People use Facebook. Every. Single. Day. Do you wish you had more interaction with your users? This is an easy way to get that. (The hard way is using Facebook's API. Cue number four...)

3. It's easy. As opposed to developing a Facebook application which is about as fun as performing root canal surgery on yourself. (And not nearly as well documented.)

4. It's free. Next...

5. Fan pages have a great widget that integrates with your own websites. (If you're reading this on AffBook.com, it's over there to the right. If not, get over there.)

6. You can post messages to your fan base like a powerful mail list. People actually respond to Facebook messages in a creepy Pavlovian way.

7. A fan page is like Facebook for your business (or a website.) You can have an unlimited number of Facebook pages. You can only have one personal page. (Don't try, they will get you.)

8. You can get all your website promotion and business off of your personal Facebook page and stop annoying all your family and friends from middle school. (They don't get what you do anyway and they never will.)

9. Facebook fan pages are very customizable. You can add custom tabs and boxes in the sidebar, including FBML and HTML, drive visitors to your newsletter signup, websites, etc.

10. No walled garden! Your fan page is available to the world (including search engines. ahem!) Your profile page is private only to your friends.

11. You're going to do it someday, you might as well do it now. Don't be like me one year from now and be just starting out.

I'm embarrassed that it took me this long to set one up for our websites. I'm currently working on my Jangro Facebook fanpage. You can see it over on the right sidebar.

Seriously, fan me up! Do it. Now.

Want to create your own but don't know where to start? Facebook can be really difficult to navigate for stuff like this. I'll be following up with another post on how to create your own fan page, but you can get started here.

Do you have a website? (yah.)
Do you like free traffic? (of course.)
Do you want to rank well in Goole? (duh.)
Do you religiously use Google Webmaster Tools? (beuller...beuller...)

No? You need to start. Really. Every week, it seems that we find something that we need to tweak about our websites.

This week, Google has launched two new "Labs" features, Fetch as Googlebot and Malware details.

If your website has been hacked and is distributing malware, Google will tell you.

If you don't have any problems, it is much less interesting. Thankfully, this is what we see...

A problem like this probably get your site de-listed from Google's index and will certainly land you on McAfee's website blacklist.

Have you ever wanted to have an inside look at some successful affiliate marketing efforts and how someone makes money from a blog?

We affiliate publishers are a pretty secretive bunch and opportunities to get an under-the-hood look are few and far between. Now's your chance. I'm going to open up and share what has happened on Jangro.com from an affiliate standpoint in the past three years.

I have told this story many times. In fact it's been told by others, including during a Keynote at CJU, but I've never written it down. It has sort of become a bit of a legend -- ok maybe an inside joke with my industry friends. In any case, it is an interesting story, and a good lesson in SEO, Affiliate Marketing, and how to make money with a blog.

The History

I had a lucky thing happen about 3 years ago. My television broke.

I didn't think so at the time of course. The television I had paid over $3000 for just a few years prior was just out of warranty and it started making a horrible screeching sound. Not to get too technical, but just to explain, the television is DLP technology and has a thing in it called a color wheel (see picture). This is a small device that spins at thousands of RPM. The computer in the television sends the picture through this spinning wheel at just the right intervals so the right image is sent through the right colors at the right time. And through marvels of technology, the picture is projected onto the screen.

As one does, I went to the Internet to research this screeching sound and I determined through much searching and little finding that it was in fact the color wheel that had gone bad. This particular manufacturer's television had a problem with these color wheels. The bad news is that it would cost about $400 for a tech to repair it. The good news is that I could buy this part myself for about $100 and fix it myself. Like any good engineer, I took on the challenge.

It was a pretty big project to take the TV apart and I quickly realized that I'd better take good notes, even take pictures, so I could get it all back together properly. At some point I also decided that I'd document the process and publish it on my blog to help fill the gap of information on the subject. At the time, the Internet Marketer in me had an inkling that I might be able to get some search traffic for such a post.

Long story short, I posted the procedure on Jangro.com. It didn't take long for the searchers to find me as it did pretty well in natural search.

There is about a year of missing data from July 2006 to Sept 2007 when I put Analytics on Jangro.com. But this is everything I have. This particular graph is any visit to Jangro.com from a search engine containing the word "Samsung". This isn't all the traffic for DLP stuff, but it's probably most of it. The dips to zero are during blog maintenance when I disabled the Google Analytics tracking. As you can see, it's been pretty flat and I know it can do better.

Now that I've freed up Jangro.com from this Affiliate Marketing stuff, I can post more of the money-making content without feeling like I'm annoying you folks that I care deeply about. I'll share what I do as I go and the progress that I make.

Stay tuned for more information on how I got here and where we go with it. Feedback and questions are welcome as I go.

I avoid buying through affiliate links.

I almost never click on PPC ads, in fact, I go to lengths to avoid them. I'll type in the URL in the ad instead of clicking on it. Same for affiliate links. If I see a link goes through an affiliate network or that it is masked.

I am hyper-sensitive to my online actions that generate money for others, mostly because I've been in this industry for so long.

I notice without trying, and I avoid clicking without thinking about it.

But why is making money for someone else who helped me find something online a problem with me? Let's think about this...

Privacy concerns?

It is true, I do not like to be tracked. I suspect that many people don't like the idea of being tracked. Though I know enough about affiliate marketing to know that the affiliate publishers don't know who I am (unless I tell them, and if I do, they have the ability to know a lot). The affiliate networks have the ability to know quite a bit about me, but that's way too much effort and they've got enough to do. Except for Google, and I've given up on Google knowing everything about me. So that's not it.

Jealousy?

Somewhere somebody is making money off my actions. It should be me (or a friend).

If I had a coupon or deal site and an affiliate link for every merchant advertiser in the world, this would be a little more rational. Except generally, I don't buy through my own links. Even if I have one (unless I want to test for tracking). I also don't like to buy through other affiliate's links (like my friend's coupon site) just for the sake of doing so. I don't feel that's right, as it costs someone money...

Cost of my Actions?

By clicking on a PPC ad or buying through an affiliate link, I know that my actions are costing someone money. This is why I don't click on ads or buy through affiliate links for the sake of doing so, especially my own.

And sometimes I judge the affiliate publisher. Do they really deserve this money? Did they wrest their way into the process and dupe me into clicking a link? Stuff a cookie? Act on a url type-in? Or did they really do something that has impacted my decision to buy something through this particular advertiser?

Competitiveness?

Like someone who works at Coke won't drink Pepsi. (It's true, they're crazy about this.)
Or sending a package to someone who works at UPS via FedEx.

When the Coke truck driver drinks a Pepsi at their friend's house, they aren't literally taking money out of their own pocket. In fact it could be argued that they're helping the soft drink industry overall.

And for that reason, I'm going to get over this hang-up starting right now as we enter this holiday season.

I don't mean that I'm going to actively seek out affiliate links for my purchases, because that's not what this is about.

But I will support the good publishers in the affiliate marketing industry by letting the affiliate commissions flow.

At the same time, In doing so, I will only support the publishers who I feel deserve commissions because they helped me make a purchase by adding value to the process. I can't help but pay attention after all.

How about you? When you make a purchase on line, do you click through your own links? Click on others? Avoid links altogether? Do you have the same hangups as I do?

Take the poll and weigh in! And comment below to let us know how you behave.

Earlier this week, Google Affiliate Network announced that they're making affiliate traffic referral data available to their advertisers.

This is not unprecedented. Other networks do this too, but (a) this is Google, and (b) they're potentially showing more data than any other network to-date.

So, I have some questions and went straight to Larry Adams, Product Manager for Google Affiliate Network.

Here's the QA I had with Larry over email.

Me: This report contains a click count for the prior 7 days. Is this every referrer, or just a sample?

Larry: Every referrer (being part of google has it's advantages :) )

Me: As a publisher, can I examine my own referrer data to see what my advertisers are seeing?

Larry: At the moment, you can only see referrers for out of date links that are generating traffic on your site. we plan to offer publishers a view of all their referring traffic but it's not available yet, no eta for the moment.

Me: Do you plan to share other information per referrer such as transactions, EPC, or conversion rates?

Larry: We think there are a lot of intriguing possibilities around providing more insight about how affiliate traffic performs based on origin and destination, nothing to share here yet though.

Me: I may be concerned that certain extraneous information may be getting passed through with these referrer URLs, such as my local tracking parameters. I realize that I can redirect and clean these up so visitors land on a clean URL before clicking on any ads. But this brings up another related transparency question. Do advertisers have access to my MID information?

Larry: Any information that is included on the URL of the page the user was on is transmitted. Note that we're not reporting on parameters you add to the tracking link, but if there is a token that is included on the page on your site, it would be included in the referrer.

Me: Thanks Larry!

Larry: Thanks as always for your interest and support.

Is this a good thing?

I support the feature. I think transparency is critical to merchant advertisers, especially as they become more responsible for their publishers' actions, such as with the new FTC endorsement guidelines. If they can see the problems, they can deal with them on a case-by-case basis. The alternative is that they may need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and eliminate entire publisher segments, or worse as the only way to avoid publishers promoting them in ways that they don't want.

Watch your Referrer Data

The last question I asked Larry is an important one to publishers who are concerned with advertisers gaining proprietary information. For example, if you are doing direct PPC, the advertisers will see what keywords you're sending traffic through. The referrer will be the search engine page that had the advertisement on it, which includes what the visitor searched for.

I don't in any way advocate being evasive in order to hide the source of your traffic, or bid on restricted terms without detection. However, you may want to take steps to prevent too much data from getting passed through to curious marketers who may also be running their own SEO and PPC campaigns.

It's can be a big pill to swallow choosing between money and doing the right thing. Good for them.

This went out to some Adwords advertisers this week:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

We're writing to let you know about a change to Google's advertising policies that could affect your AdWords account.

Beginning in the coming weeks, we'll no longer accept ads that promote Unacceptable Business Practices. This includes, but is not limited to, negative option or unclear billing, the sale of normally free items or services, and false celebrity endorsements.

Negative option billing specifically relates to sites that offer free trials, services, or other offers in conjunction with a subscription service. Sites in violation of this policy automatically enter users into a subscription if they do not cancel within the pre-determined trial period.

In order to comply, these pages must contain an opt-in checkbox that contains the price and billing interval of the subscription service on the page where a user enter their billing information.

When we make this change any URLs in violation of this policy may be submitted for Landing Page Quality disabling. Once this has been completed you will have 10 days to make any necessary changes to your website in order to comply before the disabling will take effect. We ask that you make changes to your ads and/or website to comply, so that your campaigns can continue to run.

As a business, Google must make decisions regarding the advertising we accept. We've given much thought to our stance on this content, as well as the potential effect our policy decision could have on AdWords advertisers, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may cause you.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team

source

Fast Company's Jennifer Vilaga managed an interview with the FTC's own Richard Cleland who said in yesterday's article,

That $11,000 fine is not true. Worst-case scenario, someone receives a warning, refuses to comply, followed by a serious product defect; we would institute a proceeding with a cease-and-desist order and mandate compliance with the law.

So there you have it. The sky isn't falling. You're not going to get taken down for 11 grand for any transgressions. That worst-case scenario doesn't sound so bad. And you'd have to be a pretty big knucklehead to let it get even that far.

But that doesn't change the rules. The message is pretty simple. If there's potential for conflict of interest, consumers should be notified.

My take, if you're engaging in word-of-mouth or blogging product or service recommendations, just disclose and make no apologies for it. If you're for real, people will on average think well of you for it, perhaps even better.

Isn't it just ethics? Dare I say common sense?

Do the Right Thing

Is it so wrong to just do the right thing?

But what is "the right thing?" What do I have to do to be compliant?

You've now heard it from the horse's mouth, again from the FastCompany article. The "right thing" is up to the blogger's own discretion as Cleland says,

The bloggers have to look at how they do their blogging, their business practice, and figure out the way that consumers will best get the message that this is a sponsored post. In terms of clear and conspicuous, the criteria there is that the consumers will notice the disclosure. Disclosures can be made in different ways, whether you make it outside of the text but in proximity to blog, or incorporate it into the blog discussion itself--those are the issues that bloggers will have discretion about."

You don't know what the right thing is? Srsly? Take your best guess and you'll be fine. No big deal right?

Unless of course you are toeing the line of misleading consumers and profiting from it. But then I don't feel bad for you.

The Real Risk to Affiliate Marketing

But wait, there is a risk to affiliate marketing from the new FTC guidelines. That's overreaction.

What if industry thought leaders make more of this than it is and get everybody up in arms?
What if the lawyers latch on to this and start advising extreme caution?
And then what if as a result, merchant advertisers (who are ultimately responsible for the actions of their citizen marketers) get scared and start tightening the reins on their publishers to the point of choking bloggers out of their affiliate programs?

Results are Not Typical

Now, the removal of the "not typical results" language as acceptable CYA language, that's another matter that seems to me will have much broader impact. This is a change that hasn't been talked about so much by the run-of-the-mill bloggers and affiliates. I suppose it simply doesn't affect us as much as it does the hard-core mass-marketers. I have to say, as a consumer I'm pretty happy to see that one go.

Fellow affiliate marketer Kim Rowley was spending a few days at the hospital tending to one of her twin daughters who has unfortunately landed there this week. Thankfully, it sounds like she'll be ok.

Her tweets today also caught my eye for another reason...

I asked her what this meant and she sent me the following screenshot

This is a bummer. Basically it means that anybody browsing behind a corporate firewall, ISP, or desktop that is using McAfee's Web Filtering service is blocked from seeing this website.
How did this happen?
We'll likely never know, but Kim probably used some Advertising network that pushed an ad that McAfee took exception to at some point. Maybe there was a drive-by spyware installation that was happening through a promotion. She did tell me that she has had links from CPA networks on her sites.
What can she do about it?
My advice to Kim was to go to McAfee and run their Domain Health Check. You need to go through a short process to verify domain ownership and then you can get a PDF report delivered free for your domain. Along with that report is an email address where you can raise concerns with the results.

Here's what she got back...

Lo and behold, there it is. Web Category: SPAM Urls.

What a fine category to be in. I think it's pretty safe to say that she feels that the "web categorization of her domain does not reflect the nature of her business".

Check your own sites

Short of taking a trip to the Children's Hospital of Omaha to test our websites, you can go through the same process with your websites. It's very quick and automated and you'll have an answer back within minutes.

I did this for jangro.com  just to go through the process myself and it came back with no issues. You might want to give this a try on some of your sites, especially if you've been serving up ads from third party ad networks where you don't control the advertising.

Inspired Breast Cancer Awareness month, and by the NFL's pink weekend attire where most teams donned pink gloves, shoes, and hats, Joe Sousa (long time affiliate marketer and good friend of mine) has launched RealSportsFansWearPink.com, an affiliate website and storefront featuring pink sports clothing.

Joe's donating 100% of his proceeds in October to charity, and 50% thereafter.

Subject: Nothing ChangedWe provided you guys with an extra 4% commission, etc., with the promise of increased sales and more exposure. Currently we experienced more success on your platform last year at a lower commission. If the increases are not going to be there over last than we would like to return to our old commission structure as the new incentives we offered you guys do not appear to make a difference. Please advise.

With the higher commission, his products are actually receiving higher placement on our halloween costume site, Costumzee.com. The alternative is LESS traffic. So yeah, nothing changed. That's a good thing.

I compared their numbers from last year to this year for September.

It is true, their EPC is pretty much the same, year over year, even with the increased commission. But that's only part of the equation. We're actually sending them MORE traffic than last year, about 35% more. Their conversion rate is about 23% lower. And there's the tale of the tape. Who's not performing?

I don't do this to rake him over the coals. His expectations are off, and that's partly my fault. I'm trying to fix that.

The bottom line is, this year is VERY different from last year.

Let's look at a few National Retail Federation Headlines:

September 30, 2008: Halloween Celebrations Rise As Consumers Look To Escape Everyday Realities: "Total Halloween spending to reach $5.77 billion"

September 29, 2009: As Economy Impacts Halloween, Americans Get Creative: "Shoppers to Spend $56.31 on Holiday from $66.54 Last Year"

Halloween isn't your bag? Well, it's probably a pretty good indication of what we're going to see with the Q4 holiday shopping season. So what are the lessons here?

Affiliates: Prepare for merchant disappointment and be ready to explain what's happening with traffic on your end. You might want to reset expectations with your merchant partners up front, especially if you're cutting deals to get higher commissions in return for top billing on your websites.

Merchants: According to sources like the NRF, we're going to see lower spending this year at Halloween. Holiday surveys aren't out yet, but it may be the same news. If you see only flat performance with even with better deals and efforts, don't dismay. Flat is the new up.

The last time I did this, the result was BumpZee.com, remember that? While I'm not going to let that small distraction happen again, I am looking to update my affiliate blog reading list which has grown rather stale.

What makes a great affiliate marketing blog? Like any blog, I prefer one with a personality. And one that doesn't seem to be pushing the latest mo-traffic, mo-money ebooks on me.

I want real, authentic content.

I'm looking for pointers to the best of the best. Share your favorites in the comments.

The press coverage is focusing almost entirely on the blogging community but in reality this covers any website that may publish word of mouth marketing.

You should read the FTC announcement and guidelines directly and get educated. There are also many bloggers posts explaining in detail their interpretation. Links to some resources at the end.

But in short, to me, it seems pretty clear that if you are publishing anything that can be construed as an endorsement about a product or service, and you have any material relationship with the advertiser (the provider of that product or service), you should disclose that relationship.

In the case of affiliate marketers the material relationship is pretty well defined. Much more so than in many of the examples the FTC gives, like receiving free product. If you are in the affiliate program of an advertiser, there is an undeniable material relationship.

An important question is, what is an endorsement?

Does the content have to be in the "voice" of a person who might be endorsing a product? Where is the line drawn between an endorsement and a clear advertisement?

And what if the content isn't actually promoting or recommending a product? Perhaps the article merely mentions a product with no bias one way or the other (there are LOTS of affiliate sites like this). Or what if the article is actually a negative review of the product?

Annother important distinction is that the author of the content is not necessarily the owner of the website. This brings to mind many scenarios that fall into potential gray areas.

For example, what if the content provided by the website is user generated and the website owner, either manually or automatically, converts that post to an affiliate link?

When it comes down to it, why not disclose?

This brings to bear the final question. What's reasonable disclosure?

I've had a disclosure in place on jangro.com for many months now which I link to in the top navigation. However, I'm not sure that it is enough. I probably need to put something more direct on each post that has an affiliate link in it and direct people to that disclosure.

A friend of mine, Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder.com has quickly pulled together a great solution. He created a page similar to mine, though I do like the language he uses. He doesn't apologize or act at all defensive about his "material relationships". In fact he states it proudly. And why shouldn't he? How could any consumer react negatively to that?

These guidelines go into effect on December 1st, 2009. Start thinking about how this impacts you.

More information:

FTC's Press Release
The updated FTC endorsement guides notice
A great analysis of the new guidelines by Anne P Mitchell, Esq.

I'll answer it as soon as possible.

            Name:








            Email Address:








            What#39;s your question?

Go check your email now and look for an email from me (Scott Jangro) with this subject line: "Response Required, confirm your request for information from AffBook.com."

Click the link in that email so you can receive the AffBook.com newsletter!

I hope you enjoy it!

I'll answer it as soon as possible.

            Name:








            Email Address:








            What#39;s your question?

I've been writing for five years now about affiliate marketing on my name-sake blog, jangro.com, and it's been pretty successful. Not REALLY successful though. I've sort of hit a plateau.

And every once in a while, I go through an identify crisis there. Is it a professional blog? Is it a personal blog? Is it both? Until now, it's been everything.

This is a hard decision, because I've become fairly well known as simply "Jangro" in the affiliate marketing space. It's sort of my brand. But so much other stuff has crept into that space on the jangro.com blog that they're pushing the affiliate stuff out. For example, I posted a form called "Ask Jangro", hoping to get some affiliate-related questions. I get daily questions about televisions. Alas.

DLP repair has taken over jangro.com. I didn't intend for that to happen, but to be honest I make about $100 a day on affiliate sales on television repair products and parts. How can I ignore that? As much as I seem to have tried (squandered, really), it won't go away. So it's time to give in and see if I can grow that revenue. (I hope to talk about some of that here on AffBook.com.)

In order to allow jangro.com to grow in the direction it seems to want to go, and to grow more in my affiliate marketing writing, I need to split up the content. Something's got to give.

The affiliate stuff is me. That'll go with me wherever I take it. That's the safe stuff to move, and here we are on AffBook.com.

AffBook? Am I writing a book? No. well, uh, maybe. In my head for now, this website is a book of sorts. A handbook on affiliate marketing. I've always wanted to write more about standard affiliate marketing stuff. I always seem to need some earth-shattering angle over on jangro.com and I leave a lot of stuff on the drawing board. This is where I hope to be able to publish more content like that. Stay tuned. This is going to be a fun change!

Prior to MechMedia, Scott served as a Director of Product Management at Be Free, Inc. and later Commission Junction, both divisions of ValueClick, Inc. Through industry events, affiliate network advisory boards, the Performance Marketing Alliance, and his writing activity on Jangro.com, Scott remains an active and vocal member of the affiliate marketing community.