Shawn Collins' Blog

Affiliate marketing and other stuff from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.

Archives for July 2008

Affiliate Innovations from Walmart.com

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Walmart.com won the Golden Link Award from LinkShare last week for Innovative Advertiser of the Year.

I don’t really do anything currently with the Walmart.com affiliate program, though winning this award piqued my interest.

So I wanted to see what they did to merit the honor.

The Walmart.com affiliate portal provides tools such as a link generator (ability to link to any page – department or item), targeted data feeds (attributes including top selling items, rollbacks, price drops, etc), and a wide range of banners.

They have also been working with RSS and widgets.

I’m going to give them a try and see what sort of conversions I get there, compared to some of the other companies selling electronics and gadgets.

I now see they carry Dell computers, Apple TV, and other stuff I didn’t realize they stocked.

But first, I need to go to the store and get some stuff to barbecue on July 4th.

Have a great Independence Day!

Washington State Institutes Online Sales Tax

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The state of Washington started taxing online purchases yesterday. Unlike the New York affiliate tax, Washington isn’t throwing affiliate marketers under the bus.

According to Washington Revenue Department spokesman Mike Gowrylow, the state law, which passed in 2007, has two major effects.

The first is that Washington is joining a national online sales-tax effort. The second is that Washington’s own tax system is changing from origin-based to destination-based for shipped goods. That is, tax will be collected based on the location of the buyer, not the location of the seller.

“This is a necessary evil. In order to join the national effort, we had to harmonize our sales tax with other states,” Gowrylow said. “We believe this is the cleanest, fairest way to do this.”

So, all affiliates can expect diminished returns for the traffic to Washington state residents. At least Washington affiliates won’t be getting the boot in this arrangement.

You can find out more about the National Internet Sales Tax (S1433, the “Sales Tax Safety Net and Teacher Funding Act”), introduced by Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) in July 1999, at http://www.businessknowhow.com/money/InternetTax.htm.

Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work

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Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them by Peter Shankman is an overview of some PR stunts and case studies.

Personally, I’m a total amateur when it comes to PR. I regularly issue press releases with nebulous returns.

I feel like I have to do it, but don’t have a grasp on the best methods. There is a sort of useless vanity to see my press releases in Google News and Yahoo News, but what else does that get me?

I don’t typically get press pickup, so Can We Do That?! was a helpful primer for ideas about who and how to reach out to in the media.

Peter Shankman writes in more of a personal tone than a textbook, and that works better for me. It’s almost like he’s just telling some stories one on one in his voice, rather than sanitized, technical matter.

In reading the book, I was able to reinforce some things I already knew, as well as dispel some myths regarding PR.

Can We Do That?! is a fast read. I just read it on a flight. While I was reading it, I noticed the guy next to me looking over the highlights of he book on the back cover.

As I finished, he asked the name of the book and wrote it down. I let him know I thought it was a really useful book, and he said he was going to buy it.

It was an ironic instance, because the book covers the strength of word of mouth, and that very method sold a copy during my flight.

Congressional Hearing on Online Advertising

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The U.S. House Committee on Small Business held a Hearing on the Impact of Online Advertising on Small Firms last Wednesday, and one of the speakers on the witness list was Tim Carter, Founder of AskTheBuilder.com.

ClickZ summarized the hearing, which ultimately revealed that House members oppose online ad regulation for the time being.

While witnesses touted online advertising, and search engine marketing in particular, Democratic Congressman Charlie Gonzalez suggested more industry regulation may be needed sometime down the road, and indicated Yahoo’s search ad agreement with Google could be an impetus.

“The issue is you may reach a point where there is a problem, but you just don’t have the competition or the players to do anything about remedying the problem,” said Gonzalez in regards to potential monopolies in the online ad industry. Calling competition a good thing, the Texas Representative said the Google-Yahoo deal needs to be explored further by Congress. It has already received some government inspection.

Watch Tim in action on Capitol Hill at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhSwZb49WKs and read Tim’s testimony.

Nice work, Tim. Great to see you spreading the word to the folks in Washington.

See Tim Carter speak about online video at the last Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.tv.