Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 5: Staring Down the Governator
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
We are a touch late with delivering last week’s show to you. I was out of my office away lobbying against California AB 178 on Tuesday and then at Web 2.0 Expo the rest of the week, so Mike and I took today to catch up on a few things. We start all business and devolve into my rant on the etiquette of booth staff at trade shows. So be sure to heed my words and stop, collaborate, and listen!
A few things we mention this week:
- My second job as a California lobbyist against AB 178
- Affiliate Voice: The Voice of the Affiliate Industry launched this week. Their president is Melanie Seery of NYAffiliateVoice.com
- Twitter dropped their auto-follow service, so we took a look at 3rd party apps like Tweet Later.
- Mike explored Max Banner Ads as an adserver for his blogs.
- A brief recap of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and the tools I found potentially useful: StartForce, Safari Books Online, and GooseGrade
- Another tech blog by our pals Sam Harrelson and Scott Jangro called Cloud39.com
- Shout outs: Stephanie Lichtenstein’s awesome work on the #advertisingtax organization and Facebook group, and Daniel M. Clark’s great help via Twitter.
This episode comes in at a mouth watering 52 minutes.
Read MoreAmazon Puts the Kybosh on PPC
All Amazon Associates in North American programs today received an email in which Amazon has notified us of program changes. As of May 1, Amazon will no longer allow associates to drive traffic via pay-per-click ad campaigns.
As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.
This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions.
Many programs know that PPC is essential for some affiliates, so it’s interesting that Amazon would chose to alienate these affiliates from their program. I wonder if this is related in any way to the #advertisingtax California AB 178 that we’re working on killing. Only time (or an Amazon insider) will tell!
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics Episode 4: Listen to your Community
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
This week we’re less all over the map, more focused on affiliate conferences, social media and communities, and once again our cherished shout outs. Of course our favorite topic of all time, Twitter, makes an appearance as they were in the news this week. The show comes in and just under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure.
- Social Media: Facebook caves into community pressure again, YouTube adds a Twitter Button
- Jermey Palmer uses surveys to make his affiliate marketing education products better.
- Twitter: Salesforce.com creates Twitter brand management service for companies and sells it for 1K/month, Twitter will have paid pro accounts
- Conferences: Jim Kukral organizing the monetization track for Blog World Expo Oct. 15-17, CJU dates announced Sept. 15-17, Big Omaha tech conference for midwesterners announced. Trisha will be attending Web 2.0 Expo and ad:tech SF next month.
- Shout outs: Sam Harrelson who called us Aff Marketing Maniacs, Brook Schaaf & Karen Garcia for their efforts with the Lobby Day against CA AB 178, Tim Robinson and shameless plug for Comic Book Fury
So please, go check it out and comment and let us know what you think!
Read MoreCalifornia Assembly Bill 178
Many in the affiliate marketing industry are aware of what happened last summer with the New York State affiliate tax, also known as the Amazon Tax. The state laws were amended to include affiliates as agents of the merchant, requiring the merchant to charge sales tax for purchases made to New York residents. As a result, many merchants took the easy way out and decided to drop all NY state affiliates from their programs. This resulted in an immense loss of revenue for several affiliates.
Unfortunately, several other states are following suit, most notably California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Connecticut. The most pressing of which is California, looking to enact the new bill ASAP with a hearing scheduled for April 13th in Sacramento.
In layman’s terms, AB 178 changes the definition of a “retailer engaging in business in this state” to include any retailer that works with affiliates in this state where the gross receipts or sales prices is over $10,000 per year. Feel free to read the entire bill online here.
Being a California resident myself, I can tell you that this will have a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry. One of the major affiliate networks, Commission Junction, is located in Santa Barabara. Several super affiliates are also based in California. As well, Amazon, one of the largest affiliate merchant programs out there, has already testified that they will drop all Hawaii affiliates if Hawaii’s legislation passes, so that can’t be good news for California or the other states.
This bill is short sighted and ill conceived, and we need the help of everyone in the affiliate marketing industry to fight it. A legislative day has been planned for next Tuesday, March 31st, where several of us are going to Sacramento to speak with legislators and their staff about the ill effects this bill will have. If you are interested in also participating, please feel free to email me at trisha [at] newedgemedia.com and I will gladly pass the information to the organizers.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics Episode 2: Sweet Success
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Success! After some trials and tribulations with Skype, wookies, Call Graph, Pamela, and a totally un-listenable recording from earlier in the week, we finally have a decent episode! HUGE shout out and thanks to Joe Magennis of Geek Dads @ Home for some great step-by-step instructions to help a couple of fledgling podcasters out! We still had some issues with sound quality but I think I got most of those out in the edit. So, without further ado take a listen.
Yes, I’m late on sharing this, but I also have a feeling that most the people apt to listen already pay attention to the GeekCast.fm network 🙂
In in this episode we discuss:
- WordPress Theme Wars between DIY Themes/Thesis, Woo Themes, and WP-Unlimited
- Affiliate Classroom Rebrands to Lurn, Inc.
- Using Posterous to consolidate my personal blogs.
- Gary Vaynerchuk on Tumblr.
So please, go check it out and comment and let us know what you think! You can listen here or at our wonderful hosts GeekCast.fm!
Read MoreAffiliate Classroom Rebrands to Lurn, Inc.
Is it too soon to say “Rebranding Fail”?
I just got the news that Affiliate Classroom, Inc is re-branding themselves to Lurn, Inc. I must admit that my first impression of the new name is not a positive one. I immediately wanted to ask – what was wrong with Affiliate Classroom? Didn’t it say everything it needed to say? The press release they sent along with the announcement email answered that question:
“We originally set out to provide training and best practices for affiliates. The name Affiliate Classroom made perfect sense,” said founder and CEO Anik Singal. “But in late 2008 as our executive team developed our strategic vision for the next two years, we felt limited by the name. What we’re able to offer now is beyond simple how-to information for affiliates. Changing our name is strategically liberating.”
Okay, I can understand that. When your name is very specific and your goals expand to something greater, a new name is in order. So I can support them in the decision to re-brand to a new name that’s more all-encompassing to what they want to achieve. But Lurn? I’m not sure I can be on board with the new name; for some reason it reminds me of names like Knol and Cuil and other recent social media-crazed names that seem to be trying harder to be “cool” or “cutting edge” than functional and appropriate. Which made me sad to read further down in the press release to this:
Singal added, “We’ve been getting a lot of compliments on the new name. We think that it highlights our fun personality, while staying true to our vision of empowering our students to reach their goals through technology and education.”
Maybe I’m being overly critical about the name. Afterall, that’s just my two cents. I do have to hand it to Anik & his team that they’re awesome people who are doing a good thing for the industry so I really do wish them the best of luck with the rebranding effort. For their sake I also hope more people like the new name more than I do 😛
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