Posts Tagged "GTO Management"

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 16: Wade Tonkin & Blog World Expo Guilt

Posted on Oct 2, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Fanatics |

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!

This week we are FINALLY joined by Wade Tonkin of GTO Management and the man  behind the Christian Affiliate Marketers Association.  We had a fine conversation, accidentally recorded in Mono instead of Stereo since I forgot to switch the defaults on this new computer.  I think the sound quality is good though, but welcome any feedback.  Since we’re all busy people, I opted for no intro music this week and we come in at a sultry 34:25. In in this episode we discuss:

  • Who Wade is, i.e. a partner at GTO Management
  • Blog World Expo and their affiliate program (which GTO Management professionally manages)
  • The events put on by and the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association
  • SponsoredTweets and how that’s going to Mike & Trisha
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ASE09 Session: Advertising Tax Impact (Trisha’s Take)

Posted on Aug 10, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

As you noticed, Dominic already posted his notes on the session, but here’s mine!  Session Description: Discussion on the Advertising Tax by industry leaders that have played a key role in organizing industry advocates and educating legislators on the impact of state tax nexus legislation.  The panel consisted of:

I thought it was well done.  Unfortunately there weren’t nearly as many people there as should have been.  Hopefully they’ll read this and know that they need to get informed before their business is blindsided with these tax issues.

Bullet Point Review!

  • The use tax system really doesn’t work right now, hence why states are looking to tax online retailers.
  • All this involves Nexus.
  • If you make a commission on a sale, you’re affected.  Period.
  • There’s a lot of misinformation out there – we’re trying to inform reporters enough to make them care about what’s really happening.
  • There’s a different between an affiliate company and affiliates, which is somewhat difficult to properly explain to legislators.
  • This is putting thousands of individuals out of business.
  • We need to keep politics out of it – it’s not a Democrat or a Republican thing.
  • SSTP (streamline sales tax project) not going to save us.
  • It’s GOING to happen – don’t think you’re safe.
  • This year it’s been introduced in 9 states – stopped in 7 of 9 (not RI or NC)
  • Be sure to work with like minded people to get things done.
  • It helps to have an internal advocate who knows the system’s ins & outs (a lobbyist or lobbying organization).
  • The viral-ness worked well to defeat the bills.
  • The CA bill would have passed had we not shown up, so it makes a BIG difference to stand up and help and make your voice heard.
  • When talking to legislators, there are a few things to remember:
    • The term “affiliate” is very confusing, but they understand advertising and small business owner.
    • Don’t say you’re going to move out of state – if you do, you’re no longer their problem, so they don’t care.
    • Keep your analogies simple – don’t get too technical or use jargon they won’t understand (CPA, PPC, SEO, etc).
  • There are ways around it in New York
    • First you have to meet the minimum sales threshold, so if you don’t make that you’re not affected.
    • You can rebut the nexus.
  • They haven’t yet found a way to rebut the nexus in Rhode Island and it’s too early to tell for North Carolina.
  • Merchants can just charge tax to keep affiliates – but it is something they have to start working on NOW in the back end to avoid being blindsided.
  • Affiliates need to prepare your business for it and keep lines of communication open.
  • Solutions: retain a sales and use tax attorney and understand the law as best you can.
  • DO NOT: incorporate your business in another state, use a false address, follow advice of someone who’s unlicensed, follow advice of a lawyer for another party, or try to circumvent the law.  Working within the law is your best option.
  • Being shady brings a bad name to the industry – your rep and the industries rep is under scrutiny

There was no time for a Q&A session because of all the awesome information they jam packed into that session.  It was really great and I’m still just sad to see that more people weren’t there.

Please help by spreading the word about what’s being referred to as the Advertising Tax! And for your pleasure, here’s the presentation:

Advertising Tax Impact Accomplishments And The Future

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ASE09 Session: Advertising Tax Impact, Accomplishments and the Future

Posted on Aug 10, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking, Guest Posts | 1 comment

Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.

Session Description: Discussion on the Advertising Tax by industry leaders that have played a key role in organizing industry advocates and educating legislators on the impact of state tax nexus legislation.  The panel included:

This session was very informative and gave a lot of information concerning the current problems affiliate marketers are having with some of the new tax laws, or rather the new interpretations, of the tax laws.  One of the most important facts given was that the definition of “Nexus” has been recently changed, or rather updated.  For a business to have Nexus, they must by physically present in the state.  The change in definition holds that affiliates living in a state count as Nexus in that state.  This is important because it requires all of the merchants to charge their customers the state sales tax.  The issue is not that the companies should charge this sales tax, but that it is often cheaper for them to drop their affiliates in whichever states are affected, instead of adding the ability to charge the sales tax on their site.

The chief purpose of this session was to bring people up to speed on the legislation that has been put into affect or has been defeated in several states such as New York, Hawaii, and California.  This is important because it will soon affect any state that charges sales tax, which is most of them.

From the standpoint of someone new to the industry this was a very important session to attend, as it helped to bring me up to speed, so to speak, with some of the major issues which are currently impacting Affiliate Marketing.

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When a microblog stands in for a real blog…

Posted on Jan 18, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 2 comments

twitter-plane-brown-iconAnyone who follows me on Twitter (if you don’t yet – what’s your excuse?) could see that I was more than making up for my lack of internet on my laptop by tweeting notes from the sessions I was in.  I strained one of my fingers on my dominant right hand Sunday night bowling with the folks from GTO Management, and even taking traditional written notes was a challenge.

So before I kick off all the notes I took at the sessions (it was lighter this conference than I have in the past), here’s all the tidbits of knowledge I tweeted while attending sessions at Affiliate Summit West 09.

From the Buy.at Party at Moon:

From The Ultimate Pitching Guide Session:

  • @skydiver just said re pitches on twitter “if u can’t pitch in 140 char u need 2 work on brevity anyway”
  • Twitter has replaced focus groups- @skydiver

From the ShareASale Under the Star’s 80’s themed party:

From Affiliate Videos: Where do they work best? Session:

  • Video session: Youtube is larger than Microsoft in search engines- 77mil uniques
  • u don’t have to have a professional prod studio to develop video
  • .tv traffic increasing but still nowhere near as high as .com
  • very brand & vertical specific video creative is the most requested
  • People buy from people – at the end of the day video is the most effective medium for that. Amen!
  • I love @andrewwee for bringing up ShamWOW in his question!
  • get out there & try it!

From the Pinnacle Awards Gala:

  • Nice touch on the tux & beer @shawncollins
  • Right on for Train Signals donating $10k for Breast Cancer Research- squish a boob save a life!
  • Mike Allen – Affiliate of the Year
  • AM of the yr- @djambazov Angel
  • pinnacle award exceptional merchant CelebrateExpress.com
  • pinnacle award Affiliate Mktg Advocate @mellies! Melanie Seery
  • pinnacle award Best Blogger @jangro! Scott Jangro
  • affiliate marketing legend – congrats to Kellie Stevens!
  • congrats to thew winners!

From Advanced Optimization for Landing Pages Session:

  • 2% avg conversion rate: 2009 year of conversion optimization
  • test everything assume nothing
  • Lisa Crossly Hunter: what are your affiliates doing that your search team can borrow from?
  • start now, but don’t start without a plan. And test.
  • gen rule of thumb- at least 100 conversions for at least a week (per element you change, I forgot to include that in the tweet)

From the Affiliate Triathalon:

Of course if you’re REALLY bored you can just go to Twitter Search and enter in “#asw09 trishalyn” and see EVERYTHING I tweeted while at the conference 😀

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June BAAMC Meeting

Posted on Jun 13, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing |

After running to the bank to take out money for bridge toll, heading west towards the big scary city, and rifling through my car & wallet for change for the meter while praying that the meter maids were taking a day off, I finally made it into the June Bay Area Affiliate Managers Coalition meeting, this time hosted graciously by Real Networks. As an aside, I like their building… older, brick, kinda funky and unique but still professional.

Last time I did a video because it was my first venture over there and I had a lot to say. I was happy to receive some kudos on it from BAAMC organizer Michael Brucker. We had some special guests at this meeting… Lisa Picarille from Revenue Magazine came over and Brook Schaaf from Schaaf Consulting flew up from LA just for this. Aren’t we special? 🙂

I was going to write a good long post about it, but it seems Lisa in her diligence as a journalist has beat me to it! So here’s her take at RevenueToday.com. She mentions a few other special guests that attended the meeting, but I didn’t see them (and yes… I’d recognize them!) so maybe they were on the phone listening in… I did arrive a touch late.

Affiliate ThingSo, some notes not mentioned from my take. It was nice to finally meet Lisa in person, especially after subbing for her that once on Affiliate Thing. Very gracious…although I have to tell you, it’s totally surreal sitting in a room looking at a person speak that you listen to every week without an image in your head. Strange lol. She was surprised that I’d had time to come to the meeting given how busy I usually am, which prompted me to mentally review how busy I must sound on Twitter and this here blog without actually intending it!

Also said hi to Karen Garcia of GTO Management who came to the meeting directly from SFO – what a trooper! And had a nice conversation with a fellow affiliate manager who’s used PsPrint a lot in his former life of being an event promoter and loves us! Always great to hear!

Brook talked about the up-and-coming Performance Marketing Association (PMA), which got a lot of people in the room revved up. We also talked at length about the NY affiliate tax and how we wish the networks would get more involved. What’s definitely clear is that there’s a lot of confusion on how we’re effected as managers and the programs we represent. A vague law will only vaguely be enforced, NY!

Incidentally as a side note, the PMA launched their blog this week and today Rebecca Madigan posted their plan of attack.

We also talked a bit about some miscellaneous things like video widgets and the like. Since most of us in the room have our programs through Commission Junction, we collectively wish they’d buck up on offering some more interesting and innovative creative options, like widgets. One opinion was that video is pretty good for buzz, but general consumers never think to click on the video so it doesn’t convert as a sales tool. I think the jury is still out on video as a traceable seller like a banner ad.

That’s the meat & potatoes of it, really. Our next meeting should be sometime in August. And I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I managed to escape parking-ticket free!

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Good People Day

Posted on Apr 3, 2008 in Career | 1 comment

So Gary Vaynerchuk at WineLibrary is at it again, enthusiastically making up holidays as he fancies. He’s come up with April 3rd as Good People Day, a day to thank those that help you, inspire you, etc. He explains it better than I, so here:

So I’m left to wondering who I should thank. I guess there’s several peeps out there that inspire me. Here we go, in no particular order.

  • Anne Casanova, my manager. She’s awesome!
  • Sam Harrelson. A great blogger, generally nice and helpful guy.
  • All the people I follow on twitter for constant entertainment.
  • All the people who read my blog. Y’all rock and give me a good motivation to keep talking.
  • The GeekCast crew for making me laugh hysterically once a week, so big ups to Jim Kukral, Lisa Picarille, Shawn Collins, and Sam Harrelson once again.
  • My best friends ever for always being there for me, Katie Shaw, Lorenza Martinez, Rachel Nuckols, and Jennifer Morrill. None of them are big interwebbers, so no links!
  • Karen Garcia is a great for random questions via Twitter. So is Deborah Loxly!
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