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It was a business decision based on the newly enacted law requiring the collection of sales taxes on internet transactions generated by affiliates in New York, even if the company they sell for does not have a physical presense in New York.  If I understand this new law correctly it required companies with affiliates in the state to collect New York sales tax on every sale they generate. This really gets complicated for all online companies like Overstock, and others as well. Will they all drop New York affiliates? I hope not, because it will end the opportunity for thousands of good affiliates who live there. The interesting economic question is” What is greater; the tax revenue gained or the tax revenue (income tax) lost from these out of work affiliates?  The answer may astonish the New York legislature.

Some of the biggest affliates in the nation live in New York state, so just what are they going to do?  At this point the effect is minimal, with only one big online retailer dropping these affiliates, but what is next? The possibilities are staggering, and a bit depressing for all of us in every state. After all, if one state does it, won’t there be some other states that will also want to do it?

Interestingly Amazon.com recently filed a lawsuit against the state of NY over this new law, but before it is resolved in court, there could be terrible damage to the entire industry of Affiliate Marketing.  The new law, dubbed the ‘Amazon Tax’, states that if companies like Amazon have even one affiliate in New York they must charge all customers sales tax, even though Amazon has no office, store or employees in the state.

New York Times: Amazon Sues New York State to Void Sales Tax Rules “Amazon said that its affiliates are not agents but simply sites on which it places advertising. The commissions it pays the sites are simply one method of paying for those ads, it argued.

The online retailer further claimed that the new rules violate the equal protection clause of the constitution because it specifically targeted Amazon. “It was carefully crafted to increase state tax revenues by forcing Amazon to collect sales and use taxes,” the complaint says, noting that “state officials have described the statute as the ‘Amazon Tax’.”

Read this blog report about the issue on 5 Star Affiliate Programs.

Newsday: Amazon, or online, tax will hurt small business
“If New York wants a larger share of online sales tax revenues, it should focus on making the state more attractive for online retailers to set up shop here, and improve enforcement of existing tax laws. Instead, the Amazon Tax will hurt New York’s small online businesses and entrepreneurs, and ultimately may lower overall tax revenues, while strengthening New York’s reputation as being unfriendly to small businesses. Before it goes into full effect and the damage is done, the governor and legislature should delete the Amazon Tax.”

I could not have said it better than the above article did. The New York legislature must repeal this terrible il-advised law. It will do far more harm than good. The intention is honorable, but it would be far better to generate more business in New York by making small business easier to conduct, and it would generate far more benefit to New York.

We will see how this all plays out. I think I will actually pray about this one. One of my favorite affiliate networks is in New York, called Linkshare 

This is a remarkable story, and one I love to report about. A super affiliate by the name of Jeremy Palmer is offering a free success course to anyone who is willing to sign up and commit to the course offering. Jeremy is a successful affiliate who has authored many good ebooks over the past few years. He sold over 5,000 copies of his Quit Your Day Job ebook, but recently took it off the market because he did not want to be associated with hucksters who offer “pie in the sky” ebooks with so called “auto-pilot profits” and the like. Jeremy is a long time super seller and wants to offer his expertise in a course he is running online.

To understand how it works just visit

http://www.theblackinkproject.com

There is no cost, but there are just a few rules Jeremy has defined:

You must commit to keeping up with the course schedule and all the assignments

You will commit to applying what you learn

You will get involved with the Quit Your Day Job community and help others succeed - (Pay it Forward)

You will see this through to the end and not drop out

You promise to share your success story with Jeremy

Visit QuitYourDayJob and read all about Jeremy’s learning center and then visit the Black Ink Project and sign up for the free course. Jeremy is not fooling and it is really free. I have signed up for the course myself, so I will give a testimonial later after I have gone through it successfully.

Small to medium sized businesses that want to break into the Affiliate Marketing business sometimes are faced with daunting issues and questions: The first is who do you go to? Where is the best information about affiliate program management? Should you hire a programmer to build an in house program or join a network? If you decide the programmer is too expensive, then what network do you go with? Who has a good and affordable program out there?

For a small to medium sized business in retail, there are plenty of very expensive choices for affiliate program management, but I always recommend that people do some research. Look around on Google and use queries like “affiliate programs for merchants ” and “merchant affiliate programs “, and so forth. If you click the links and do the search you will see a listing on both of the above searches for a wonderful company called SHAREASALE. I have been an affiliate member of this company for several years and I have referred many merchants there for some good reasons.

Shareasale is one of the best affiliate networks on the internet, and they offer some great tools for affilates. In fact they also screen the new affiliates coming in to be certain these new members will properly represent their paying merchants on the web. These tools are very effective, and allow affiliates more opportunities to make sales for merchants they have elected to represent.

Affordable merchant solution - Shareasale is a very affordable solution for small to medium sized retailers. They have their rates published right online, and you can take a look at them by clicking here. These are very affordable rates, among the most reasonable anywhere, and I can personally attest to the fact that the team at Shareasale are very helpful to new merchants after signing up. They are there to answer questions, and they are always available during the business day.

From the affiliate standpoint, the network is so user friendly. The tools are effective, and the merchants they recruit (or that we send to them) are the kind of merchants we want to promote. They have a tool I love called “make a page” where I can access any of my chosen merchant’s products and use the tools to make a product display page featuring individual products. I can list 5, 10, 50 or even 100 if I want to. The point is that the service is one that not all affiliate networks offer to their affiliates or merchants.

There are other Affiliate Networks out there, but as far as I am concerned Shareasale is the best one, and it is my first choice. If I owned a retail store and I wanted to expand into affiliate marketing, I would choose Shareasale. I have published a review of the network on my Affiliate Networks page on my domain. I also feature other networks there, and maybe you will see one that fits the bill for you there.

Just as a final note I wanted to mention that there are some bigger names in affiliate marketing network management, but most of these big names are also much more expensive to join and participate in. Ultimately the choice is up to you and your business team to decide. It is always a business decision.

Affiliate Marketing is the relationship between website owners and merchants whereby the merchant offers the website owner (affiliate) a commission fee structure for linking to his/her merchant site to offer goods or services for sale. Affiliates publish websites so they are also known as Publishers and merchants advertise on affiliate sites, so they are also called Advertisers. ( read the wikipedia defination of affililate marketing ).

Affiliate programs can be used in conjunction with blogs, websites and social media networks. A few years ago there were only a few well known affiliate programs, but very rapidly larger “networks ” emerged which combined merchants and affiliates within one site. For merchants, the networks have provided an affordable solution to having an affiliate program, while affiliates like the convenience of having a large database of merchants to choose from. Networks have been a natural evolution within the industry. Many thousands of networks exist at all levels today, and they are not difficult to find. A few excellent affiliate networks can be found at this link .

In the beginning many new desktop money makers realized the potential to make money from home with this new and exciting industry, and the fact that affiliate programs are completely free to affiliates made it even more inviting (merchants must pay a fee to belong and to have their programs managed). Millions of affiliate produced websites have leaped into the fray and in fact actually compete with major shopping retailer sites on the popular search engines. This process still goes on today, and the competition is stiff to say the least. Since it’s humble beginnings back in the mid 90s, affiliate marketing has grown into a 7 billion dollar industry online (that is a conservative figure).

Affiliates have become more and more technically advanced over the years and so have the networks. The most popular networks offer more tools and ease of use, while some that are not as competitive are still just offering links and banners to affiliates. Needless to say that most affiliates look for the networks that are able to recruit the best merchants as well as to provide the best tools to allow more sales. One of the best in the business today is Shareasale. This network is one of the leaders in innovation and tools for affiliates, as well as being affordable to merchants. They have won quite a number of awards within the industry for excellence in practice. There is more about this at this Squidoo Lens about them.

If you are a blog owner and have some established traffic within the niche market you work in, then there will certainly be a good affiliate program for you. Also, if you have published a website on a specific subject, there will be an affiliate program you can link to contextually that will allow you to monetize your site. What is happening in today’s high tech web 2.0 market is that now just about everyone is able to participate in revenue sharing of one form or another, and all of this has evolved from the original model of affiliate marketing. It has taken on a life of it’s own on the internet.

With the proliferation of more and more websites, blogs and social communities with affiliate applications, there has emerged necessary controls within the industry to prevent spam. If fact, today the biggest player Google makes it clear that if you are an affiliate publisher, your sites must have unique value and high quality presentation or they may not be included within their index. This was not the case in the early years, but certainly is true today.

The industry is like any other. There are good guys and bad guys, referred to in the business as White Hat and Black Hat. Some standards have emerged and the industry even has it’s own twice yearly seminars called Affiliate Summits. These are always sold out and are very popular events. Read more about the summits at the Affiliate Summit website.

Affiliate marketing is a wonderful opportunity for people from all walks of life, and in this blog I intend to explore the many facets of the entire business. Affiliate include IT professionals, real estate agents, coin collectors, web designers, gardeners, mechanics, writers, journalists, laborers and everyone in between. The business allows ordinary and extraordinary people from every part of society to have the vehicle to earn revenue from their unique content and experience. In the business we call it “publishing your passion”, and just about everyone has a passion.