Taking New York City by Storm
I’m excited. First of all, because I’ve never been to New York before (a layover on my way to Orlando hardly counts). Second of all, because it’s that time again – time for Affiliate Summit! We’re flying JetBlue, which I LOVE! So comfortable on a cross country flight! Last week on Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 12, Mike and I did a pre-show review of the sessions we’re thinking of going to. I can’t wait, but there’s other things I’ll be doing while in NYC!
- Seeing Avenue Q
- Eating New York pizza at Famous Original Ray’s Pizza
- Walking through Central Park
- Hopefully seeing the Empire State Building
- Wandering Times Square
- Trying to survive on the NYC Subway
And more – Dominic and I have tacked on two extra days to sight see. I can’t wait! We’re leaving today and will get in LATE tonight and then brave the subway to get to the hotel if we’re feeling adventurous – if not, swallowing cab fare. Of course come Sunday, it’s all business. Affiliate Summit East 2009 starts off with a bang – my panel on Getting Noticed FAST! I know I’ve shamelessly promoted this panel, but seriously, you’ll learn a good deal if you’re looking to make a name for yourself. It’s in Classroom C at 12pm so stop by – you’ll get an awesome sticker courtesy of Sticker Giant!
After that, Dominic and I will split the difference so we can cover the most sessions for you here. I’m also going to encourage Dominic to write up a post of his views of Affiliate Summit as an outsider/newbie, so stay tuned for that. I’ll try to post them as timely as possible – some of that will involve reading Dominic’s writing 🙂 I’m sure there will be plenty of time for me to wander around and talk to folks so if you see either of us walking around, stop us and say hi! And feel free to badger Dominic about his model railroad or school!
Read MoreBlogging at Affiliate Summit East
Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.
As I am sure Trisha has mentioned before I will be blogging while attending Affiliate Summit East 2009. Currently I am attending DeVry University, and am in my final term towards a BSB in Project Management. I am, as of yet, still undecided upon what field I will apply my degree, and have decided to attend Affiliate Summit East in order to further my knowledge. I hope to present my views as a student and as a project manager on what I learn from each of the sessions and events which I attend.
Look me up while I am there. I will be rather hard to miss, wearing a very bright Blinkstar Media shirt, as you can see in the picture we took here at home. See you there.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 12: Affiliate Summit Pre-Show
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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’re back together again! It feels like it’s been 10 years, but with technical problems and schedules we’re finally back in the saddle. And just in time for Affiliate Summit! With the show about a week away, this is our Pre-Show. Follow along with the agenda for the summit and make this interactive! This week we clock in at an EPIC 1 hour and 12 minutes. In in this episode we discuss:
- Affiliate Summit East 2009 Agenda
- Christian Affiliate Marketer’s Gospel Brunch at the Cotton Club.
- The parties surrounding Affiliate Summit (Thanks to Missy for putting the post together with them all!)
- Trisha’s husband Dominic experiencing Affiliate Summit as a student interested in marketing and affiliate marketing.
- Dominic’s awesome airbrushed shirt for Blinkstar Media.
- Shout out to Sticker Giant for donating stickers for Affiliate Marketers Give Back and for the Getting Noticed FAST Panel.
Where has Trisha been?!
Like a lot of people, I’ve had my head down working. I’ve been working hard managing the MyJewelryBox.com Affiliate Program. I’ve had so much to do I haven’t had a ton of energy at the end of the day to keep up the blog. Regrettably that means that you, dear reader, have suffered.
Actually, I’m not so full of myself to honestly believe that you’ve suffered without my blogging. There are many other resources to get your news in all things online marketing. I started this blog almost exactly two years ago, and I still question whether people actually learn something from my mumbles here.
Coming up at the beginning of next month I’ll be attending Affiliate Summit East 2009 in New York City, speaking on a panel called Getting Noticed FAST. Our goal is to help others make a name for themselves within the industry as we’ve tried to make a name for ourselves. We’ve put a lot of time into our preparation; we want to make sure that the attendees walk away with concrete, actionable items to apply to their own careers.
My husband Dominic will be attending with me. He’s currently finishing up a degree in business, focusing on project management. He’s interested in potentially going into affiliate marketing , so he’s attending to help me cover all the sessions for this blog. He’s excited to learn more about what I do and the people I interact with, and I’m excited for him to get this introduction to my professional world as well. We’re also tacking a couple days onto our trip to do some sight seeing. Neither of us have ever been to New York, so we’ll be seeing Avenue Q the Friday night before the conference and meeting up with some friends who live in the NYC area.
I’ll also be staffing the Meet Market table for Affiliate Marketers Give Back from 5-6 pm Sunday August 9th during the show. In an effort to raise money for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, AMGB will be offering limited-edition Affiliate Summit hats (available for a $40 donation) and Affiliate Marketers Give Back laptop stickers (available for a $10 donation). If you won’t be attending and would still like to make a donation, you can do so at AMGBWalk.com.
On Tuesday I’m happy to be participating in GeekCast Live. I’m betting since this one has an open invite and is officially on the schedule, it’ll go a lot more as planned than when they tried to do one in Boston at ASE08. By “as planned”, I know before they had more of a Diggnation vision in mind than the devolved drunken conversation that happened. It should be a good time and a great way to end the conference.
So what now? I hope to come back from Affiliate Summit with a renewed passion for this blog. More great content for you. Stay tuned!
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 10: Gonna Make a Change
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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!
Unfortunately this week we had a mic failure on Mike’s part, so even though I could hear him when we were recording the podcast on Skype, when listening back he was inaudible. I tried amplifying it and leveling it and everything, but it was a lost cause. So instead, we decided I’d give you a recap on what we talked about since they were all pretty important issues. Basically, we’re taking a page from Shawn Collins’ book on podcast failures ;). So the title refers both to all the changes going on with tax rules and disclosure regarding affiliates AND to the change Mike has to make to get the recording right next week!
The recap episode is a short and sweet 26 minutes on the dot since it includes a Jackson tribute at the end.
In this show, we discussed:
- A recap of Affiliate Convention.
- Amazon dropped North Carolina affiliates and sent a warning letter to Rhode Island affiliates. Darren Rowse wrote about it on Problogger.
- The FTC is tightening it’s rules regarding disclosure, but it’s still ambiguous enough to leave affiliates questioning what this means for them. Daniel M. Clark wrote an article on the FTC disclosure issue, as well as Brian Clark of Copyblogger’s wrote about how to turn disclosure into a selling point.
- Twitter servers took a hit yesterday when the news about Michael Jackson’s sudden death broke. Are they ready to be a major search engine?
- Rumors swirled about other celebrity deaths – this doesn’t make Twitter look like a legitimate resource in the eyes of skeptics.
- Finally, Rest in Peace to Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, who both passed away yesterday. We pay tribute to MJ and pontificated on whether or not we’d see affiliates attempting to capitalize on these events. I see just now that Shawn Collins is thinking about this topic as well on his blog.
URGENT! California AB178 is BACK!
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!
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