• Thinking of going to Search Engine Strategies 2010 – New York

    There seem to be more and more conferences that are focused on the Affiliate Industry.  Maybe too many.  Well at least too many for me…..

    If you are like me there are just way to many to be able to go to them all.  We are, of course, in the business of Performance Marketing, not "Conference Attending."  Don't get me wrong, these conferences can be invaluable to your business.  It's a balance of attending the right ones. 

    There are a few of these that I keep hearing good things about and yet have never attended.  I keep hearing great things about Search Engine Strategies.  So, I've been thinking lately that I need to go to SES and check it out for myself.

    I know, the New York show is only weeks away and I probably should have made up my mind by now, but honestly it's a short drive for me and so I guess I can afford the procrastination on this one.

    Anyway, I've been looking over the agenda for SES New York to see what looked interesting.   On Day 1 there are a number of sessions that looked interesting:

    Achieving Success with Improved Ads Quality – By Google

    10 Things To Supercharge Your SEM Campaigns in 2010

    But what really caught my eye, this year, was Day 3.  There is an "Affiliate Track" that seems to be new this year.  This track will be led by Kris Jones of PepperJam Network.

    From looking at the agenda, it appears that there are some good Round Table type discussions setup for Day 3.  

    The link to the Affiliate Track is here: Affiliate Marketing Forum – Conference Day 3

     Also on Day 3 are some other very interesting looking items like:

    PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle

    Ads in a Quality Score World

    There really seems to be some good opportunities here.  Based on that, I will probably end up going…if I do, I'll be sure to report back.  

  • Virginia Retailers Fighting with Affiliates

    A recent Retail Merchants Association Newsletter gives us a more clear look at the opposing lobby's view point of SB 660 in Virginia.  What we like to call the "Advertising Tax Bill" and they like to call "The Amazon Loophole" legislation.

    Today the bill passed the Senate 28-12, clearly showing that "their message" that this bill closes a loophole that enables Amazon and other large Internet retailers to avoid paying sales taxes on transactions occurring in Virginia. (The back and forth posted on GoReston.com is telling)

    The newsletter though clearly shows that they don't understand affiliate marketing or the impact that this bill will have on Affiliates.  Here is what they say about the opposition:

    The opposition, the Northern Virginia Technology Council and AOL,
    are pushing the message that the bill will cause loss of jobs for
    affiliates. Affiliates are those who have banner ads on their sites
    that direct consumers to sites such as Amazon.com.  The VRF contends
    that no job loss will occur IF     those Virginia based internet retailers
    will collect the sales tax when they have a retail transaction with
    Virginia consumers.

    That is a big IF!  It hasn't happened in other states:

    So IF these Internet Retailers act differently in Virginia than they did in ALL the other states who passed similar legislation, THEN the Virginia affiliate companies won't be affected and income and jobs won't be lost.

    Affiliate Marketers place advertisements for the Internet retailers,
    they are not party to any transactions in or out of the state.

    This bill is about trying to pass a law that will try to force companies who do not have a physical location in Virginia to pay sales taxes on all transactions in the state by trying to say that their affiliate marketing relationships they have with Virginia affiliate marketing companies makes them a Virginia Retailer.

    Many large Internet retailers have already put their Virginia affiliates on notice, if this bill passes, they are going to terminate those affiliates to avoid paying this tax. 

    So, while I am all for having a level playing field for Virginia companies, I don't think this bill accomplishes that, and I am concerned about the thousands of Virginia companies who may get harmed in the process or be forced to move out of the state.

    Perhaps the confusion lies in the broad use of the term "AFFILIATE" and if legislators understood more about affiliate / performance marketing companies, they would be excluded. 

    This Whack-a-Mole game with Amazon is a slippery slope.  If using Affiliate Marketing relationships doesn't work and Amazon cuts their ties with affiliates what is next?  Advertising Agencies?  Direct Mailers?  Consultants?  Resident Employees?

    Hopefully this bill will stop in the Congress, or be seriously amended like they did in Colorado to remove Affiliate Marketing Advertisers.  If not, we hope that Governor McDonnell will stay true to his words.

  • Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Keynote Address on Influence at Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Vegas

    Dr. Robert Caildini’s Keynote address on Influence was one of the best keynotes I have heard.  He clearly had a deep and througough understanding about influence and changes you can make to increase your sales affectivness.  I am going to encourage my entire staff to watch this video, and hope you will as well.


  • Commission Junction give affiliates more email control ….FINALLY!

    For a while we (along with others) have been telling CJ that we need more control over the email notices that are distributed through their system.

    There are certain emails I want to get personally, but I couldn’t do that for fear that my inbox would instantly fill up with newsletters and offers to join programs.

    We spoke with CJ about this in the past and again at Affiliate Summit West last month.  Either this was already in the works, or they are just really quick! 

    When I logged in today I saw the following:

    Get too much email?

    Clients can login to update their communication preferences with our upgraded Mail Settings tab.

    It’s easy – simply head to the Mail > Mail Settings tab.
     

    So I checked it out.  When I got to the settings I found this screen:

     

    So now I can filter what emails go to each email address based on roles.   This is a great enhancement and one that is long overdue!

    So let me say to the whole CJ Crew……”Thank you for listening!” 

  • Adam Viener Interviewed by Rebecca Blacksmith on Leaders Portfolio in DC

    I just wanted my Wiseaff.com readers know that your chief Wiseaff was interviewed on a local Washington DC Radio talk show.

    The show will air at 11am on Wednesday February 3rd on Washington DC’s business talk Radio 1260AM WWRC, and then be available online at LeadersPortfolio.com thereafter. 

    In this interview I talk about how I started Imwave, what effect the economy has had on performance marketing, and leadership.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts!

    Adam

    P.S. I also posted some addional information about the show and my expericnce with Rebecca Blacksmith on the imwave blog.

  • Amazon Tax (Affiliate Tax) Revenue Generator or Small Business Killer?

    I've been watching the issue of the "Amazon Tax" ever since it snowballed through New York.  In some cases, it has passed and in other cases (either publically or privately) it has been defeated.

    For those of you who may not know what I mean here's a recap: 

    Online businesses are ONLY required to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence, called a Nexus.  Recently New York, in its infinite wisdom has stated it is losing hundreds of millions of dollars because of sales to online businesses like Amazon.

    As such, the state legislature has redefined nexus to not only include brick & mortar stores, but also to affiliates.  Affiliates are in essence commission only sales reps…they are small business run by entrepreneurs trying to make a living.  And guess what they pay TAX to the state on their income.

    When NY enacted this tax, Amazon, instead of figuring out how to collect sales tax, simply discontinued working with all of its New York affiliates.  The same has happened in other states as well. 

    Result?? 

    1) States see $0 - THAT'S ZERO - new tax revenue from the people it went after like Amazon, Overstock etc.

    2) Small Business is hurt badly since they can no longer market for companies like Amazon and Overstock which results on lost revenue.

    3) States sees LOWER actual business revenue from these Affiliate Businesses who would pay taxes on business income.

    There are a couple of thoughts and realizations I have come to:

    1) Politicians tend to operate in sound bites and press releases.  What do I mean by this?  Well it's easy to propose a *new* tax when you are crying foul against a large retailer like Amazon and holding up a sign with a Giant Number like $220 Million.  The reality is that once these taxes pass, Politicos are not accountable to what the end result it.  Did it work, Did it hurt small business?  We don't know.  They don't go back and look at results.

    2) Taxes are VERY RARELY repealed once passed.

    From the Providence Business News:‘Amazon tax’ has not generated revenue

    The Performance Marketing Association has done a good job of fighting these issues when they pop up, but one begins to wonder..….should we be fighting this one state at a time?   The current administration has put focus on small innovative businesses perhaps there is a course of action there?

    Excerpt from state of the Union 2010

     ....is there a way to take this fight to the federal level and oppose it ONCE rather than 50 times?  Perhaps our industry needs to engage some policy experts.  One thing is certain, with almost all 50 states facing huge budget deficits, this issue is sure to raise its ugly head everywhere this year. 

    Bottom line:  This tax hurts (and is some cases Kills) small business. 

  • Twitter House Cleaning – Purging my Follower List and InBox

    I decided my Twitter account had gotten out of control and had heard about others doing some house cleaning of their twitter accounts.  I decided to look into it.  Here is my problem.  I setup an auto follow tool some time ago, and can’t remember where I had done it.  My follower list was over 3k people and my twitter timeline was useless.  Here is what I did.

    1. Cancel AutoFollow – Since I couldn’t remember which service was doing my auto-follow for me, and this is what created the bulk of my problem, I decided to just change my password.  Once I did this, I had to go back to the tools I was using like hootsuite and tweetdeck and give them my new password.

    2. Purge my Twitter Follow List – I used a free service called UnFollowAll to purge out my follower list.  I had to run the tool several times to get it all done.  But you can’t beat the price.  I have heard others paying $25 for this service.

    3. Purge my Twitter In Box – The other problem with AutoFollow is your inbox can quickly get filled up, I used a free bookmarklet called DM Whacker to clean out my inbox and sent mailboxes.  With over 800 messages this would have taken me a while to do by hand.

    Now I have a fresh twitter account and can begin to follow the people whose tweets I really want to see.  I still see all the messages that include @adamviener in the messages, so if you think I really should be following you, hit me up that way!

    See you on Twitter!

    Adam

  • Another Reason to Shop Online this Year

    As if you needed one more reason to shop online this year, other than the great deals and web coupon codes you can find at sites like dealzam and twitter feeds like @dealtwit <grin>, now you have to watch out for sales reps doing dance routines like this microsoft store:

  • Tracking202 Acquired

    Congratulations to Steven and Wes on their recently announced sale of their Tracking202 product!

    Great job guys!

  • Google Forgiveness… hard to achieve?

    A few weeks ago I received an email from Google suggesting that 1 or more of the ads in an AdWords account were disapproved.  In looking at that account, I discovered that they were showing disapprovals for ads that had been deleted.

    As anyone who works with Google knows, their notices can be somewhat ominous and sometimes suggest that upon any further disapproval that your account will be suspended.

    Obviously concerned, I contacted them and was told that this notice was sent regarding ads that were disapproved in 2007.  

    Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but I think it's now 2009…almost 2010?  Why in the world would I be getting this email for ads that had been disapproved 2 + years ago?

    I dig further……

    So these ads were in fact disapproved in 2007, and paused, where they sat until May 2009.  In May 2009, they were deleted (well at least the best delete you can do in AdWords).

    So here it is 5 months later and the ads were: paused 2 years ago, DELETED 5 months ago….why in the world would the policy team even be looking at these in a review process?  They are gone, deleted, not active.  Well here is the response I got:

    …Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about deleted ads resulting in a policy warning. Please be assured that our policy team and I understand completely that the ads from 2007 that violated policies were later deleted.

    Our policy team reviews accounts based on past disapprovals: the fact that you paused and deleted the ads from 2007 does not erase the fact that the ads were submitted and violated policies in 2007.

    If our policy team did not look at all disapprovals, and only looked at undeleted disapproved ads, then it would create a situation where advertisers could violate policies and effectively delete the fact that they violated any policies.

    Our policy team will look at the full history of an account when issuing suspension warnings as well. The fact that two years have elapsed since the violation does not remove the policy violation from our policy team's consideration….

    Never mind, that this was 2 years ago,

    Never mind that the ads have since been deleted

    Never mind that there have not been not other since then

    Apparently any disapproval you may received, just sits out there…forever and at any time, paused, deleted or not, you can be forced to pay for past sins.