Yesterday I had the privilege of accompanying 9 of my fellow affiliate marketers to the California State Capitol building in Sacramento to help lobby legislators against the passage of California Assembly Bill 178.

I have to say on a personal level, this was my first trip to the Capitol, and the most involved I’ve ever gotten with politics in general.  It was a pleasant experience overall.  And yes, I got a little “star struck” for lack of a better term walking by Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office.  I had to fight the urge to knock on the door and demand court!

Back to business.  10 of us were able to make it up, some coming from Southern California.  We had appointments set for almost all day, so we split into two groups so we wouldn’t run the risk of running late or overcrowding offices.  Our group had a few lack luster meetings with staff that really didn’t understand what we were talking about or weren’t really familiar enough with the bill to care yet.  But we also had some good meetings with other staff members who were incredibly receptive to our message and offered us a lot of advice regarding how to go about the lobbying that we’re doing.  Some even went so far as to call other offices we didn’t already have appointments with and help to make us appointments.

It was equal parts optimistic and pessimistic.  While it looks like it’s going to be incredibly difficult to outright kill the bill because of the eagerness of the state to collect any income possible.  Focusing on the message that it’s best to keep the bill as broad as possible in the definition keeps it as fair as possible.  In a perfect situation the Streamlined Sales Tax Project to require the collection of sales tax across every state would make the playing field as fair as possible, but that’s already been in the works for almost a decade and doesn’t look promising to be enacted any time soon.  So in the meantime, we do what we can.

You can still do what you can.  Now that we’ve taken meetings at the capitol, feel free next week to take meetings in your district in California.  The members will be on vacation and potentially available at their district offices.  Staff will not be on vacation and will still be in Sacramento working, so if you weren’t able to join us under such short notice, feel free to schedule your own appointments and talk to the Assembly Members on the committee for Revenue and Taxation.  The meetings were generally short, 15-20 minutes of a staff members’ time.  We were able to leave behind the letter that Linkshare wrote in opposition along with the opposition letter from the Performance Marketing Alliance, co-signed by over 300 affiliates.

If you’d like copies of these documents for your own leave behinds materials and have the intention of taking a meeting either in the district offices or in Sacramento, please leave a comment and I’ll see  how we can get those materials to you.  Here’s information on the committee members to reach out to.  If you live in their district, all the better (they prefer to hear from constituents whenever possible).

• The Committee for Revenue and Taxation: (916) 319-2098

• Charles M. Calderon (Chair) - Dem. 58th District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0058, Phone (916) 319-2058
  • District Office: 13181 N. Crossroads Pkwy, Suite 160, City of Industry, CA 91746, Phone (562) 692-5858
• Chuck DeVore (Vice Chair) - Rep. 70th District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol Room #4102, Sacramento, CA 95814, Phone (916) 319-2070
  • District Office: 3 Park Plaza, Suite 275, Irvine, CA 92614, Phone (949) 863-7070
• Jim Beall, Jr. - Dem. 24th District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0024, Phone (916) 319-2024
  • District Office: 100 Paseo De San Antonio, Suite 300, San Jose, CA 95113, Phone (408) 282-8920
• Joe Coto - Dem. 23rd District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0023, Phone (916) 319-2023
  • District Office: 100 Paseo De San Antonio, Suite 319, San Jose, CA 95113, Phone (408) 277-1220
• Diane L. Harkey - Rep. 73rd District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol Room #4177, Sacramento, CA 95814, Phone (916) 319-2073
  • District Office #1: 29122 Rancho Viejo Rd., Suite 111, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675, Phone (949) 347-7301
  • District Office #2: 300 N. Coast Hwy, Oceanside, CA 92054, Phone (760) 757-8084
• Fiona Ma - Dem. 12th District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0012, Phone (916) 319-2012
  • District Office: 455 Golden Gate Ave., Suite 14600, San Francisco, CA  94102, Phone (415) 557-2312
• Jim Nielsen - Rep. 2nd District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol Room #6031, Sacramento, CA 95814, Phone (916) 319-2002
  • District Office #1: 280 Hemsted Dr., Suite 110, Redding, CA 96002, Phone (530) 223-6300
  • District Office #2: 1527 Starr Dr., Suite U, Yuba City, CA 95993, Phone (530) 751-8351
• Anthony J. Portantino - Dem. 44th District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0044, Phone (916) 319-2044
  • District Office: 215 N. Marengo Ave, Suite 115, Pasadena, CA 91101, Phone (626) 577-9944
• Lori Saldaña - Dem. 76th District
  • Sacramento Office: State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0076, Phone (916) 319 - 2076
  • District Office: 1557 Columbia St., San Diego, CA 92101, Phone (619) 645-3090

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Some regional goings on this week that are important and affect your life as an affiliate marketer!  Or, if you’re a different kind of marketer, well, I don’t have much for you this week

• Live in NYC?  Become a Big Brother or Big Sister and get a free pass to Affiliate Summit East in NYC this August.
• Live in California?  We need to fight against California Assembly Bill 178, which is proposing online taxation very similar to the New York law from last summer.  The Performance Marketing Alliance and Beth Kirsch are leading this grass-roots effort to squash the bill and I’ll be as involved as I possibly can.
• Help a Marketing Pilgrim out and take this twitter survey.  Paul Bennett is trying to see attitudes relating to branded corporate Twitter accounts.
• TweetDeck, my favorite Twitter application, is now integrated with Facebook.  You have to go download the beta release though, it won’t be pushed to you automatically just yet.

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I haven’t had the chance to do very many of these during February… the month was filled with birthday celebrations, a vacation, and a lot of Wii in the evening since I’ve been strangely obsessed with Guitar Hero and Animal Crossing: City Folk.  But since I’ve been back from vacation I’ve seen some great stuff, so I want to share.

Forgive me, some of it will be a bit out of date.

• Geno Prussakov put together a great list of affiliate marketing events in 2009.
• California is looking into a tax for online sales.  Scott Jangro has written an open letter to the California outlining why it’s a bad idea.  I am going to take his advice and grab the letter to send myself as a resident of California.
• Read the full California Assembly Bill 178 and contact your representatives to explain why this is a bad idea for affiliate marketers in California!
• 20/20 contacted the Performance Marketing Alliance for some background on affiliate marketing for a series they’re doing on the proliferation of work-at-home schemes.  It’s good to see that they’re able to do some positive PR for the industry already… very promising since they’re off to a slow start.
• I wrote another guest post for Marketing Pilgrim, this time on The Search Engine Known as Twitter.
• If you’re at all interested in reading about my rambles about my Caribbean cruise vacation, check out my Posterous blog.

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