California 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 MoreFree Toolsday for June 10th
OK it’s TECHNICALLY still the 10th here in California, so here’s this week’s free tool.
SEO Quake
is an extension for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. It’s a great tool for webmasters to improve their websites, but also a terrific tool for an affiliate manager doing due diligence on the websites their affiliates list.
My favorite feature is the Whois tool. I use this to check the registrant information on websites on affiliate applications before I approve them. I use the whois data to try to weed out the shadier side of affiliates registering with websites that do not belong to them.
As with most toolbars or extensions, which features you include are completely customizable. Another great feature for the SEM/SEO minded is the page rank button and the other Alexa rankings and Google index numbers.
Of course, there are tons of features of the toolbar that I haven’t even explored! So go check it out at www.SEOquake.com and tell me what your most useful feature of the toolbar is!
Read MoreBoston Tips
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As this is not a travel blog, I have little business posting any travel tips for Boston. However, as many of us are returning to Boston in August for Affiliate Summit East 08, it will be good to know these things for any first-time traveler to the Boston area.
- Boston Cab Co. is the most reliable and easiest to get ahold of when you need a taxi. Keep their number handy – (617) 536-5010. Rates are reasonable for a big city, too.
- Faneuil Hall is pronounced “fan-you-ill” and is home to (among cool historic things) the Hollywood Replica Cheers Bar (complete with gift shop). If you want the original Cheers, it’s in the Beacon Hill district on Beacon St. Faneuil Hall is right in front of Quincy Market, South Market, & North Market. It’ll take probably an afternoon to see everything if you want to just wander around. Very picturesque.
- The Cheers Beer is nothing special, but you do get to keep the glass. I guess that makes it worth $15. The Irish Stew is really good on an overcast Boston day. The Boston Cream Pie was “meh”.
- Delivery.com has HUNDREDS of local places to choose from if you’re too lazy to leave your hotel. A lot have late delivery hours too. Thank you, college town!
- Charlie’s Pizza & Cafe has good burgers (they’re on Delivery.com!)
- There are like a million colleges there – it’s almost ridiculous.
- Duck Boats truly caught my imagination – I wanted to take a Duck Boat tour, but it’s too expensive for my blood (~$32).
- New England Style Clam Chowder eaten IN New England isn’t any better than what we have here in San Francisco. At least not at the Boston Chowda Co. (I tried it at the Prudential Center Food Court).
Boston really is a beautiful coastal city.
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