Several months ago after speaking to my state representative, I wrote a post about Indiana and the Advertising Tax and the fact that affiliates in Indiana were safe for the time being because our legislature had repeatedly refused to enact an Internet tax and had actually made a deal with Amazon not to make them collect the taxes in exchange for Amazon building distribution centers here. A lot has changed very quickly in the last week.
The IBJ reported yesterday that Simpon Property Group filed suit against the Indiana Department of Revenue to force the state to begin collecting sales tax from Amazon. While I haven’t yet seen the suit, the article made it sound like the issue was mainly about the distribution centers but hinted a bit about an affiliate nexus. My fears were confirmed today when the IBJ reported that an Indiana state legislator is now filing a bill that will force Indiana to collect taxes from online retailers that “have a physical presence or affiliate distributors” in the the state. The exact “nexus” language is not there, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this legislation in basically going to call for an affiliate tax. [click to continue…]
Last week we continued growing our Affiliate Summit Meetup Group in Indianapolis with a meeting held at the RAM Restaurant and Brewery in Fishers. We had about 15 attend, which was our biggest turnout so far.
Erich Stauffer Speaking
Thanks to Erich Stauffer for being our presenter. Erich runs a technology consulting business that offers marketing, web design, and computer support. He has been doing affiliate marketing since 2009. Here are some of the key takeaways from his presentation on How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Business: [click to continue…]
Affiliate marketing can be lonely when you are a solo business owner spending most of your days on the computer. Social media can complicate matters when it feels like a “chicken/egg” scenario of trying to get followers by showing that you already have followers. The one thing that can help solve both of these problems is building up a “tribe” around yourself.
What is a tribe? Most people would agree that at its core a tribe is a social group that exists on the basis of shared interests to help support each other. Since Seth Godin wrote about tribes in business, the terminology has evolved from primarily anthropological terms to more colloquial. I was reading an article today entitled “How to Build Your Tribe – Finding ‘Your People’” and it really struck me how much we use tribes as affiliate marketers and how we should use them even more.
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This week I was lucky enough to give a webinar through Affiliate Summit entitled “Monetize Your Blogging Skills with Affiliate Marketing.” The intent of the webinar was to teach bloggers how they can easily move from blogging to affiliate marketing with a little bit of important information and some easy tools. It was not a basic seminar about what affiliate marketing is (see my Start Monetizing Your Blog video for that information). Rather, it was food for thought about disclosure statements as well as some helpful plugins and network information. [click to continue…]
Last year I was lucky enough to participate in a panel at Affiliate Summit West with two industry veterans, Kristin Kinsey (affiliate manager and owner of MadHatter Consulting) and Carolyn Tang Kmet (now the affiliate manager for Groupon), and moderated by Marty Fahncke. Our presentation was entitled Start Monetizing Your Blog Today and is a great primer for new affiliate marketers. A few things have changed (Carolyn got married!) but the basics of the presentation are still solid.
Carolyn started the presentation with an introduction about the basics of affiliate marketing, who the players are, and how it all works. I then discussed ways that bloggers can use affiliate marketing including banner and text links. Kristin finished up by explaining the role of affiliate managers and Outsourced Program Managers (OPMs).
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