Tiffany Washko

Are you an affiliate marketer? If so, you need to be aware that state governments are enacting legislation that could effectively kill your business. I am greatly concerned about this since I would say 50% or more of my monthly income stems from affiliate sales.

As an affiliate I post links and banner advertisements on my sites to Amazon and various other online companies. I send them traffic and potential sales and when a sale is made, they in turn pay me a commission… anywhere from 4% to 75% depending on the company and product. I get a big fat check every month from Amazon and smaller but still very nice checks form a host of other places. But my profession as an affiliate marketer is under attack in many states and sadly many affiliate marketers just got the axe.

First some background though. Online stores like Amazon, Zappos, or Barnes and Noble are only required by law to collect sales taxes in the states where their company resides. That is their tax “nexus”. If they are based in Idaho for example then they only have to collect sales taxes on purchases made by people in Idaho. Sales from Ohio would fall outside their tax nexus and they would not be required to collect sales taxes on those purchases. For years, states have been looking for a way to to get those taxes and the new economic crisis has given them the incentive to try and do it. Unfortunately for affiliate marketers they have decided to use us as the means to do this.

New York and North Carolina recently passed legislation that identifies affiliate relationships as something similar to an employee relationship. Using this logic North Carolina and New York can now require online companies to collect state sales based on the fact that they have “employees” (affiliates) in those states. Well, these companies are not stupid… they saw that they were being railroaded into a new tax nexus by way of their affiliate relationships and in response they are simply firing their affiliates and avoiding the taxes. They avoid a new tax nexus and affiliate marketers in those states are essentially without a job anymore.

Yesterday Amazon.com fired 1000 affiliates in North Carolina. Termination letters have been sent to affiliates in Hawaii from Zappos, Amazon, Endless and several other smaller merchants. This may very well be the sole source of income for these people and now due to a poorly written law they have no income anymore AND the companies avoid paying the taxes anyway. The affiliates lose, the states lose (the sales taxes AND your income taxes), and the companies go on with business as usual. Half a dozen other states are poised to pass similar legislation.

I am simply horrified that these laws are being passed and I am so sorry for affiliate marketers living in these states. I know several affiliate marketers that live in Hawaii and they can only afford to live their because they work online as affiliate marketers. Local jobs are almost non existent in their areas.

If you make any money from affiliate marketing, if you work online, or if you just hoped to make money affiliate marketing some day then you need to write the legislators behind these awful bills. Affiliates are not employees, they are advertisers. Does contracting with a radio station to buy advertising make them your employee? Heck no! The affiliate marketing profession is being used as a weapon to collect state revenue and we will be the ones hurt.

Talk about it, blog about it… we need to stop this before more states adopt it and affiliate marketing is dealt a death blow.

And now more then ever we should all find ways to diversify our income so that if this law passes in our state it will not leave us without any income.

Visit the Performance Marketing Alliance for details.

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In the last few months I have gotten several emails from perspective mom bloggers who want to know what kind of money can be made blogging. Most kinda dance around the specific question I KNOW they want to ask but some come right out and ask. How much money do you make EXACTLY and do you think I could make that much too?

I think all to often we see articles and advice that you can make money blogging but then when moms go out and try it they may  only sew a few dollars trickle in. They get discouraged and they think they have been duped or that it is a matter of luck. Some quit blogging and others continue but are highly dubious of the moms who “claim” to make real money. I know I felt that way at one time. I saw Internet Marketers online claiming to make upwards of 5-10 grand a month and when I managed to squeak by with only $50 after busting my butt behind the screen…I was skeptical.

I am not skeptical any more but I am realistic. Some of the figures floating around are not going to be within the reach of the average blogger. Much of it is about having the right niche at the right time. Much of it is about having the right voice and the right writing style. BUT much of it is still about working hard, finding a unique voice and site, testing and tracking your efforts, and always looking for ways to put your content in front of more and more eyes.

I saw this article online today that addresses a WSJ claim that bloggers who have 100,000 uniques per month make on average $75,000. In my personal opinion that figure is crap. I am sure some do make that much but they must have a super hot niche with hot affiliate products to promote. That just cannot be the “average” IMO. I had 88,000 uniques to just ONE of my sites last month and that would theoretically make me $66,000 richer this month. Yeah… that didn’t happen. If that HAD happened I would be blogging right know from my villa in Tuscany or my condo in Costa Rica.

So how can you gauge the amount of money you can potentially make? Heck if I know!

Well, actually I saw a much better model on Frederic Patenaude’s site a few weeks back. I like Frederic because he makes a very good living online in the raw foods niche. He also does some business to business stuff but mostly I see him promoting health and information products so he is closer to my “niche” than a guy who promotes IM stuff. The IM niche (Internet Marketing) model is not very relevant to me and what I do.

Anyway in his graph, in the video on that page, you see the general figures you can make depending on the size of your list. He claims that if you have 3000 readers you can make about $1500-3000 per month. For 5000 readers the number is $2500-5000 and for 10,000 readers the figure is $5000-10,000.

I really like this chart but that may be because I have had results that mesh with it. My list number and monthly income falls within the second tier and I DO see gains when my reader numbers go up. For me the key is having regular readers and also still having that search engine traffic that comes from relevant, focused, content. Those visitors don’t always subscribe but they DO buy and they do increase ad network revenues.

So overall I find it better to work on building your lists (subscribers) rather than just trying to drum up high traffic numbers. The money is in the list.

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I do a lot of affiliate promotion and one of my biggest pet peeves is joining an affiliate program with poor affiliate graphics or none at all. I mean if you want me to promote your product give me something to work with folks!

To get around a lack of quality promotion materials or the fact that I am using an indirect affiliate service like Amazon I have started to use my own affiliate banners.  They look good and they are unique to me so my visitors know I REALLY DO like these products. Here are some examples I just started using last month.

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