As forewarned, the “affiliate nexus” language has been added to the state’s budget in an effort to generate more revenue for California.  So, we need support again!  LinkShare sent out a letter to all affiliates on behalf of the PMA, and Commission Junction sent out one of their own.  In part, the PMA email read:

You may remember the grass-roots campaign we waged in April, to defeat an anti-affiliate tax bill that would have a detrimental effect on affiliate programs. Even though we defeated that bill, it has been revived, in a desperate hope to help California’s budget crisis. The bill was originally defeated thanks to the affiliate community in California, who was responsible for convincing the sponsoring committee that this bill was a bad idea. Now it is time to repeat that stellar effort, because we have a few more people to convince.

So we need your assistance again!  Below is a list of important California officials that need to hear from you that this is a BAD idea!  Also below is the copy you can feel free to paste into the email you send to them!  Some folks are going back to Sacramento today to do what they can, and unfortunately I won’t be able to join them this time.  So I sent emails.  I checked these against the website and they all seem accurate even though several of mine bounced back, so I’m also including a link to their website’s contact form.  Note, however, that some won’t accept correspondence from an address outside their district, which I think is complete fail of the system, but that’s just me.

• Senator Lois Wolk – Senator.Wolk@senate.ca.gov – Contact Form
• Senator Darrell Steinberg – senator.steinberg@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
• Senator Elaine Alquist – senator.alquist@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
• Senator Roderick Wright – Senator.Wright@senate.ca.gov – Contact Form
• Senator Ronald Calderon – senator.calderon@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
• Senator Gloria Negrete McLeod – senator.mcleod@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
• Senator Lou Correa – senator.correa@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
• Senator Denise Ducheny – Senator.Ducheny@senate.ca.gov – Contact Form
• Jennifer Kent (Gov. Schwarzenegger’s tax adviser; please address as “Ms. Kent”) – Jennifer.Kent@gov.ca.gov

Here is the email copy you can paste into the email.  Remember to edit the parts I’ve italicized in red below.  Commission Junction’s template can be found here.

Subject: OPPOSITION to Sales/Use Tax Nexus Bill (AB 178 Skinner)

Dear Senator [Insert Last Name]

I am a small business owner with a website, and I am in strong opposition to Sales/Use Tax Nexus Bill (AB 178 Skinner), which would require retailers that receive referrals from advertising on websites, such as mine, to collect sales tax in California.

I am opposed to this bill because it would substantially harm my small business by reducing a large source of revenue that I depend on to survive. This revenue results from providing advertising on my website on behalf of out-of-state retailers. [Describe briefly how your business model is set-up and what you contribute to the local economy.]

If retailers believe that doing business with me will result in their having to collect sales tax on all California sales, they likely will sever ties with my business, putting the viability of my business at risk. Such was the case in New York State where Overstock dismantled its affiliates program and hundreds of other business followed Overstock’s example. This left thousands of small and medium-sized affiliate businesses with a 50% loss of income.

Unfortunately, this bill is futile. If enacted, retailers will drop me as a partner, California won’t collect sales tax as a result – and my business will be devastated in the process.

For these reasons, I respectfully oppose this legislation.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

Please be sure to spread the word to your fellow affiliates potentially affected by this bill!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Epic Fail for me lately!  I’ve been overwhelmed and started a list of things I wanted to share last week and never got around to posting it!  I’m behind on my feed reader and my podcasts, but ahead with work!  At least you know that whenever posts get slow here, it’s because I’m working my booty off! And I didn’t even remember to post this yesterday on the actual 12th!   So, lots going on this past couple of weeks!

• A4U Awards Winners for 2009 were announced after the ceremony in New York on Tuesday.  Congrats to all the winners!
• James Martell wrote a good post on Affiliate Summit with some great tips for attendees.
• Twitter is on the cover of Time Magazine.  Sigh.
• Huge shout out to StickerGiant.com and their CEO John Fischer for his help with some nifty stickers to give away to our audience of the Getting Noticed FAST panel at Affiliate Summit this coming August!

I know, this doesn’t even scratch the surface, but before some of this gets TOO outdated, I wanted to share!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

At first glance when starting to compile this week’s Cribbed Content, it didn’t look like much was going on.  My Google Reader was kind of light, as were the other scoops and news coming across my desk.  But then when I really started to dig, I found some cool stuff!  Including a really easy Twitter Contest from DIY SEO to win a Kindle!

• Last week I reported that Affiliate Summit East 2009 was all sold out of booths.  They’re now all sold out of Meet Market tables as well, the first time for them that they’ve sold out of exhibitor space before Early Bird pricing was done.  Congrats to the ASE09 team!
• Speaking of Affiliate Summit, co-founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins were in Dallas at the Inbound Marketing Summit speaking about monetizing blogs.  Missy was kind enough to share their slides from the presentation.
• Affiliate network ShareASale is toying with an Affiliate API and has released the initial sections for use.
• Google recently changed their trademarks policy in regards to AdWords paid search ads.  Search Engine Land wrote an article on how to protect your brand under Google’s new trademark policy, and Geno Prussakov also wrote an article on how this applies to affiliate marketing.
• Apparently Google mucked around with PageRank… AGAIN… and devalued Twitter profiles.  Which is fine with me since I realized awhile back my twitter page was  PR9 when this here blog was only PR2 (currently my twitter page is a PR3).  What really irritated me was that, out of nowhere, this blog went down to PR0 out of nowhere with no real changes other than a redesign (that, if anything, should have HELPED SEO).  So in my opinion Google can shove with with their PageRank racket anyway.  Anyway, Andy Beard explains a few things about the change.
• I’ve seen a certain someone from a certain CPA network tweeting a lot in the last two days about making money from Twitter with CPA ads.  That seems to be ALL this person is tweeting about and it’s getting on my anti-spam nerves.  So instead of calling this person out, I’ll be passive-aggressive and just pass on this article for everyone: 10 Irritating Mistakes that People Make with Twitter. Thanks Nikki Pilkington for a good article right when I was thinking about it!
• I’m a big fan of to-do lists.  There’s been some talk about different apps recently (I was turned onto Toodledoo and love its integration with iGoogle homepage).  Nate Moller wrote a great article on why to-do lists are key to entrepreneur success that any slightly unmotivated or scattered entrepreneur should read!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads