[Rich Owings]

Hi all,

I learned the other day that the Governor has established a Budget Reform and Accountability Commission. The link goes to a form where citizens can make suggestions. As of last week, they had only received 400, and they have the web suggestions on their agendas, so it appears they will consider anything submitted. I urge you all to submit your take on the nexus legislation, and how it has decreased income tax revenues and not resulted in increased sales tax.

Rich Owings

[Matt McWilliams]

This needed to be bumped.

Thanks for sharing Rich!

[Rollerblader]

There is another issue that this opens up though. How people will write to them. If you approach it that it is bad and stupid, etc... they will not take it seriously.

If you share some of your website stats from your state, the level of Affiliate you are at, the Linkshare and Affiliate Advocacy Maps, make sure they understand they will be preventing online sales and unemploying even more residents, etc... then you will have a much stronger case. It is all about messaging and since most of us are Marketers, look at who your audience is and try to hit them the hardest on what matters to them, not what matters to you.

[Trust]

I need to read thru it but does it matter if you're not a resident of NC? Maybe some perspective of people who want to move there (like me) but can't because I would automatically lose 3 of my top 10 merchants and my biggest one of all, Amazon. This is the major thing that is keeping me from moving there.

[Rich Owings]

I think it could be very helpful for them to hear from businesses wanting to relocate to NC, that are deterred by this legislation.

[Lindy Rig]

Not sure where exactly to post this. I am a newbie to the site .. and a newbie to affiliate marketing as a business possibility. Not looking for the "magic bullet" (great post btw), but here is my question (not asking legal opinion)... do you guys think there is a future for new affiliate marketers (probably search engine marketing or blogs, not website per se) in North Carolina, or are the tides just making it impossible? I'll look for niche, don't need the big boys like Amazon.

[atomgiant]

Hi Lindy,

Welcome! I live in NC (near RTP) and my experience since the affiliate tax passed in NC has been that 99% of the merchants I am dealing with are not dropping NC affiliates. I think there is definitely a way to make affiliate marketing work in NC even with the affiliate tax legislation.

There are a couple of things you can do to help protect yourself in the event a merchant drops you:

1) Stick to a niche where there are lots of merchants. Try marketing to as many as possible. This will also allow you to find the ones that work best for your approach to affiliate marketing.

2) Build your affiliate links in such a way that you can easily either turn off merchants that drop you or redirect those links to a new merchant. This may be easier said than done. If you don't have programming skills there are ways to do this for the non programmer but might be worth looking through the archives for tips and/or post a separate post. In my case, we have all affiliate links go through a standard url so we have a single place where we map urls.

So in summary, there are a LOT of merchants willing to work with NC affiliates currently. It never hurts to plan for the possible dropping by any of these merchants. If you build this in from the ground up, it will give you the flexibility to experiment with many merchants and should make your overall risk much less than if you put all your eggs in one merchant basket.

Good luck,
Tom

[delsol]

Tom's answer is more qualified then mine since I do not live in NC.

Originally Posted by Lindy Rig

.../...
I'll look for niche, don't need the big boys like Amazon.

However Amazon could have actually been an excellent training ground for affiliate marketing and can provide excellent product selection for niches. Amazon and the other "big boys" tend to have high conversion rates. This enables you to focus on learning the other aspects of affiliate marketing.

[etcetera]

Bump!

Next Meeting: Wednesday March 10, 2010
1:00 p.m.
Fifth Floor Administration Building (Room 5034)

[Rich Owings]

Thanks. No agenda posted yet though, and it looks like they never post minutes. Ah, transparency!

[Witzer]

Originally Posted by atomgiant

Hi Lindy,

Welcome! I live in NC (near RTP) and my experience since the affiliate tax passed in NC has been that 99% of the merchants I am dealing with are not dropping NC affiliates. I think there is definitely a way to make affiliate marketing work in NC even with the affiliate tax legislation.

I agree.........It can still be done.
I only lost Amazon from my portfolio......Of course, I tend to work with smaller merchants.

[dw9155a]

I'm willing to help. I don't have a website or an affiliate business, but I think this state sort of sucks when it comes to laws. If someone makes a generic letter for me to go by I will send it to the legislators.

[dw9155a]

I have convinced a few kids at school to support this as well, and since my grandpa got me $150 worth of stamps for christmas I will pay for their postage. Make the letter I will forward it on.