Stupid New York Tax Law Gets Affiliates Axed
How’s this for stupid? New York state brings in a new tax law that makes out-of-state businesses with New York based-affiliates collect sales tax on Internet purchases made by New York State residents, if the company’s affiliate sales in the state exceed $10,000.
By result, merchants that don’t want to deal with additional tax collection are dumping their New York-based affiliates.
Overtstock has notified it’s 3400 New York based affiliates that they’ve been dumped effective June 1st, 2008. One New York-based affiliate on Shawn Collin’s blog commented that he’d already been dropped by 4 Linkshare merchants.
Amazon, on the other hand, will collect the tax but it is also suing New York state for introducing a law that it deems unconstitutional. Bravo, Amazon!
Brook Schaaf of MediaTrust has put out a call to all affiliates proposing a new industry association.
Appears to me to be a lose-lose-lose situation.
Consumers won’t be keen to pay the additional tax, so they’ll buy less. Merchants that terminate affiliates will earn less. And in a state where more than 1.86 million residents (about 1 in 10) are already food stamp recipients; New York’s affiliates will earn less, thereby reducing tax inflow and increasing the size of the breadlines.
This ploy to weasel $50 million bucks more out of New York taxpayers’ pockets is especially heinous considering how ordinary citizens are already having a hard time making ends meet with high prices for food, fuel and escalating unemployment.
What a great contribution to an economy already in shambles… not.
Are you an affiliate living and working in New York state? Has your association with some merchants been terminated recently due to this new law? How do you think that will affect your bottom line? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
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Making Millions in Tasty Greens
May’s issue of “Secrets To Their Success” features…
- Gerald P. was a leader on the “green” shopping scene for years before taking his business online where he’s now bringing in $10 million a year with his organic goods site… and giving back to the community at the same time!
- Christopher P. turned disappointment into sweet victory after he stumbled into selling everyone’s favorite product! With more than $7 million incoming this year, he’s definitely enjoying the taste of success!
- IMC revamps J. Arthur D’s site on which he offers a unique service to artists. IMC shows him how to connect with his ideal audience and get the traffic and attention he needs to grow his business.
Each and every month “Secrets To Their Success” features 2 inspirational web business success stories and one website makeover from which you can learn EXACTLY how these unlikely Internet entrepreneurs do it as well as “steal” their strategies and duplicate their success!”
An STTS subscription also gives you a chance to win $5,000+ in FREE consulting — just by entering your name and email address! Once each month, they draw the name of one lucky member who gets their web site or business plan critiqued by the Internet Marketing Center team.
Sign up for “Secrets To Their Success” today to learn and be inspired by the success of others.
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WP-Polls Plugin Upgrade Needed with WP 2.5+
I was having a tough time trying to install and make the WP-Polls plugin work on a new blog this past weekend, when it finally dawned on me…
The version of the WP-Polls plugin that works with Wordpress 2.3.3 wasn’t compatible with Wordpress 2.5.1.
Fortunately, the developer of WP-Polls, Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan, recognized the issue and rewrote the software to work with WP 2.5. The latest version available for download is WP-Polls 2.30.
If you’re still running Wordpress 2.3 or earlier, the older versions of WP-Polls are still available for download on Lester’s site.
Many thanks to BlogClassroom member Sharon, for reminding me to remind you about the need to upgrade your WP-Polls plugins!
About WP-Polls: Developed by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan, WP-Polls lets you put an AJAX poll system on your WordPress blog. The polling software now lets visitors select more than one answer (if you allow that option) and there are ton of other options from which to choose including poll answer and result sorting, who is allowed to vote (registered users or anyone) and a wide variety of poll display options.
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Facebook Friends, Profitting from the Recession and a Nifty Plugin
This week, guest NPT blogger Alexander Alaric wrote a comprehensive instructional piece about building leads using Facebook called “How I Got 2198 Facebook Friends With NO Profile“.
To find out how many folks are actually using Facebook as a marketing strategy, I added a Facebook Poll.
I also posted “Have You Tried One Click Installer?” about the plugin that will save you from ever having to upload another plugin with FTP.
And because I know many of you are feeling pinched by the current economy, I posted “8 Recession-Proof Product & Service Ideas for Affiliates” which will help you strategize and succeed during tough times.
Coming up next week, we’ll be talking about how to get into the minds of your visitors to sell MORE of your products and services online.
Until then, have a super prosperous week.
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8 Recession-Proof Product & Service Ideas for Affiliates
“Could this become the worst recession we have seen in the postwar period? I think the answer is yes”, Martin Feldstein, a Harvard University economist and the outgoing President of the National Bureau of Economic Research told attendees at the Futures Industry Association conference. Speaking at CFO Rising in Orlando, former IBM and Chrysler Corp. finance chief Jerry York predicted that the recession would be long, deep and ugly; the result of an economic “perfect storm” with few positive signs on the horizon.
As would be expected, those hit hardest by the current downturn are working people. Hundreds of thousands of borrowers were defaulting on their mortgage loans before the rates were adjusted to the higher levels. Subsequent to the subprime mortgage crisis, home prices collapsed in many markets where many with home loans now owe more than their homes are worth.
To make matters worse, recent job loss figures have been staggering. In stark contrast to its forecast increase of 25,000 jobs, the U.S. Labor Department reported a net loss of 63,000 jobs in February - the deepest cut in staffing in almost five years.
During uncertain financial times, people without jobs don’t spend money, while those who do have jobs tend to cut back on discretionary spending, postpone larger purchases or shorten their holiday buying lists – which doesn’t sound like a happy prospect for those of us who want to sell to them. Read the rest of the article
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Have You Tried One Click Installer?
The OneClick installer is perfect if you want to save time downloading and extracting zipped plugin or theme files then uploading them to your Wordpress blog via FTP.
After you’ve installed and activated OneClick, you’ll be able to automatically install plugins from either their zip file on your hard drive or directly from the zipped file’s URL.
In Wordpress 2.5.1, you access OneClick from the Dashboard. After installing a plugin, all that’s left for you to do is activate it.
OneClick has a plethora of features, all outlined in the Wordpress Plugin Directory information for OneClick. That page also includes a download link for the plugin.
The only problem I experienced with the plugin was not being able to delete one of the plugins (via either FTP or cPanel) that I’d installed with OneClick.
Turns out that had I bothered to read the instructions, I wouldn’t have had to bug Steve, as there’s a fix for that too. It’s called the purgatory module, and is included with the plugin.
The OneClick installer might be the LAST plugin that you ever download, extract and then upload to your wp-content folder, and that’s a GOOD thing.
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Facebook Poll
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How I Got 2198 Facebook Friends With NO Profile
This is the first of a 5-part series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric .
One of the reasons people use Facebook for networking, especially for business, is because it is a protected environment.
Unfortunately, many new users get caught by the Facebook spam Nazis and get their accounts shut down. These guys mean well but unfortunately sometimes the “baby gets thrown out with the bathwater”.
Even seasoned Facebook users have had their accounts disabled and banned. Robert Scobleizer (a long-time and experienced Facebook user) wrote about how his account got shut down here. He later got it reinstated but why make yourself go through the hassle.
So, let’s start out with some of the Facebook basics and avoid having your account shut down. Because after the effort it takes to build up 500, 1000, or more friends you want to protect your account and the time that you’ve put in. Read more
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I make mistakes so you won’t have to… :-)
I think I may have to change the tagline on NPT to the subject line of this newsletter…
“I make the mistakes so you won’t have to.” 
In that vein, yesterday I posted an entry to the blog titled “Another Good Reason to Write Your Blog Posts Offline“.
Fortunately, that was my only major time-wasting gaff this week. However, I’m sure you won’t have to wait long to hear about the next one.
After blogging about why I bought Joel Comm’s PLR package, NPT readers were asking how best to use private label rights articles and templates, so I posted an entry that links to a new article that answers that question.
Note too that post includes a special invitation link on which Joel’s template package is offered at the original price which is 50 bucks less than the current price. Be sure to return to that page if you navigate away to read the whole sales letter.
Anyway, I’m off to try and break something else on one of my sites … so you won’t have to.
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Another Good Reason to Write Your Blog Posts Offline
In the Super Affiliate Handbook I talk about using a text or HTML editor (as opposed to an online interface) to write your blog posts to avoid losing your hard work should you lose the connection.
Well, here’s another reason.
I’d spent about 20 minutes researching and writing a post about carbon offsets for the Roamsters blog yesterday when I suddenly saw what is in the image above… i.e. NOTHING.
Hoping that the draft hadn’t yet been auto-saved, I quickly closed and then re-opened the browser window.
No luck, still NOTHING there.
Obviously, I somehow managed to delete all the content I’d written and the sad thing about it is… unlike an HTML or text editor, there’s no UN-do button or CTRL-Z function!
Argh.
Maybe one of these days I’ll take my own advice.
Looking for a good, inexpensive HTML editor? CoffeeCup offers their HTML Editor as a free trial download.
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