Archives for March 2011

My Affiliate Summit partner, Missy Ward, is compiling a combination of dessert recipes and affiliate marketing insights called “It’s All About the Cookies… and brownies and pies and cakes…”

100% of the net profits from the sales of “It’s All About the Cookies… and brownies and pies and cakes…” will be donated to Team Affiliate Marketers Give Back’s 2011 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.

Team Affiliate Marketers Give Back will be walking 39 miles to raise funds to fight breast cancer on June 25-26, 2011 in the Rocky Mountains.

Submit your recipe and insight at allaboutthecookies.com/submit-your-recipe.

Inspire 2011, an event hosted by Digital Window at the Hilton London Tower Bridge earlier this month, featured a number of interesting stats and facts in the presentations throughout the day.

Some select tidbits…

• Around 80% of affiliate sales only involve interaction with a single affiliate.
• Almost 60% of the UK online population uses Facebook regularly.
• In the UK, Facebook receives more traffic than Google.
• Facebook advertising can generate a 500% better conversion rate when the landing page stays within Facebook.
• 15-20% of abandoned records can be converted to sale.
• Coupons/vouchers are more popular with mobile internet users than check-ins. JiWire found coupons to be the second most valuable benefit of location-based applications (second only to GPS/Maps and appearing above reviews, status updates, checking-in etc.)

Read more at http://blog.buy.at/friday-afternoon-inspire-ation/.

Texas House Bill 1317, which would put countless small businesses in the state out of business, is scheduled for public hearing on Monday, March 28, 2011.

The bill, filed by Representative Elliott Naishtat (D-Austin), aims to force out-of-state retailers to collect Texas state sales tax for Internet sales, based on the view that affiliate marketers constitute a tax nexus for the retailers.

As we’ve seen with similar legislation in other states, most recently in Illinois, Amazon and other affiliate programs remove the affiliates of that state from their affiliate program, so they still do not assume a tax nexus, which means no additional tax revenue collected.

The affiliate marketers are effectively fired, due to the legislation, which results in less income for state residents and the state economy.

Plus, some of the newly unemployed will inevitably lead to an increase in government expenditure, as Texas will have to pay out benefits to support the unemployed. Who pays for that? The taxpayers.

Small business loses. The local and state economy loses. The state budget loses. The taxpayer loses.

Come out and show your support against Texas House Bill 1317 – the failure of this bill would be a win for Texas!

Join Texan affiliate marketers at the Capital building in Austin on Monday, March 28, 2011. RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/internetmarketingparty/events/17025598/.

Nearly two-thirds of consumers shopping for financial services products conduct their research online, but less than one-third of them actually complete their purchases online.

They opt instead to complete their purchases in person or via the phone, according to RingRevenue.

RingRevenue’s call performance marketing aims to increase sales and improve advertising ROI for marketers of financial services products.

Recent data from the company indicates that Progrexion Marketing and Lexington Law increased sales over 600% and 50% growth month-over-month with their call performance marketing program.

Many affiliate networks enable integration of campaigns combining phone numbers and online.

Get the white paper, Why the Financial Services Industry is Turning to Call Performance Marketing.

More details at http://www.ringrevenue.com/corporate/press/ringrevenue_increases_sales_financial_services_industry.

Texas State Senator Royce West (D-Dallas) has filed a companion bill in the Senate that is identical to Texas State Representative Elliott Naishtat’s (D-Austin) House Bill 1317.

The Naishtat bill seeks to collect taxes when residents buy online through companies that don’t have a physical presence (tax nexus) in Texas.

The bill says that if a company has affiliates in the state, then that counts as a physical presence.

However, neither the House nor the Senate bill has a provision to account for the reality that the impacted affiliate programs simply fire the affiliates.

This scenario has played out a number of times, including just last week when Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed HB 3659 into law.

Before the ink was dry, Amazon.com booted Illinois affiliates from their affiliate program.

So, no new taxes are being collected in Illinois, but thousands upon thousands of small businesses have been financially crippled. Their income has been eliminated.

That’s money out of the Illinois economy – a net loss for the state, the citizens, and the businesses.

Let’s hope Texas lawmakers learn from the bad decisions of other states. As George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”

Don’t put us out of business – we are not Amazon. We are not big business. We are not a tax nexus.

We are small business owners and hard working Texans who heartily and proudly put money into our local economies.