I estimate that 99% of Californians do not understand the implications of the new small business tax that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law yesterday. This law would mandates online sellers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com to start collecting sales taxes on items shipped to California if they have some sort of relationship with an affiliate. What is an “affiliate?” That is the question that I also estimate 99% of Californians don’t know the answer to. Put simply, affiliates are people who are in the business of pre-selling products from online retailers for a commission. Think of bloggers who blog about the merits of a particular product, then offer a link to buy from an online retailer.

The operative word here is “business.” For many affiliates, this is a small business that they run. As a business, affiliates make an investment in time and money with the hope of making a return on that investment. Sometimes it works, and they do have a positive ROI. Now, with the new law, the biggest online retailer, Amazon, has terminated all affiliate relationships in California. Simply put, all the affiliates that rely on Amazon for their income are out of business. Is this a good thing for the struggling economy and for real people trying to create a living?

As an affiliate marketer myself, I cringe at the thought of yet another tax on top of all the other small business taxes that are imposed on the little guys just trying to make it. I started to write down my thoughts for this blog, but found an article by Pace Lattin that aptly states what I wanted to say:

—–

There has been a great deal of discussion of all the Affiliate Tax laws being passed in the media. Unfortunately, thanks to a great spin campaign by companies such as Walmart, the discussion has been focused on how these new Nexus Tax laws will affect large companies like Amazon and Overstock. Time and time again these new laws being proposed are called “Amazon Taxes” for the sole purpose of ignoring the rest of the companies that will be affected when these taxes are passed. The real truth behind the Affiliate Tax debate is that these laws will have a profound and significant affect on almost every company in the industry, from the largest to the smallest – but will have the greatest impact on the small companies.

This is not an “Amazon” tax, or an “Overstock” tax, but instead a “Small Business Tax” that has been labeled incorrectly in order that the general media might ignore the reality of what these taxes will do to small businesses. I’ve actually met a few attorneys who don’t quite understand the real problems with these laws. Let’s quickly look at what most of these tax laws will do, and explain it simply:

The laws specify that if there is any affiliate of any company making revenue for a product in that state, then the company itself has to pay taxes for any transaction in those states.
My explanation is purposely obtuse and vague, because in many cases so are the laws that are being passed. The definition of a transaction or purchase is not very specific and thus is extremely problematic. This means that anyone engaged in any sort of ecommerce, whether it is sale of a product, promotion of a program, signups to site, in theory could be forced to pay those states taxes.

Thus if you are CPA network promoting a product and you have affiliates in those states, you may be liable for taxes in those states. Why? Because as anyone who is in this industry knows, the definition of who is selling the product, versus what a network is and even what a publisher is, is often difficult to pin down. Sometimes affiliates of CPA Networks are the publisher, sometimes they are just a PPC buyer, and sometimes the network is a publisher of another network. With all the connections, who is to say what establishes the nexus? Don’t expect States that are desperate for money to actually define this for you, but instead send any company that has any affiliates in that state, anyone that reports that their money is made from marketing, tax bills. We are their new “banks.”

Even if we knew the answer definitively to the different questions, many companies, from lead generation firms to dating sites are going to start avoiding CPA networks in those States for that specific reason. They do not want to risk that working with a company in a certain State will somehow cause a nexus and thus require them to file paperwork, file additional taxes. They’d rather make it easy and work with someone else.

Thus, as I started, the victims here are not the Amazons of the world. They are the small businesses. Most CPA networks are just that: Small businesses, with a few employees, working hand in hand with their affiliates to create valuable opportunities for their advertisers. They, along with their affiliates will suffer the most. These taxes are aimed at our industry, our friends, our community and our businesses. If we continue to allow them continue without standing up, supporting those people who are fighting, it is very possible in a few years we all will wish we did.

Pace Lattin
pace@pacelattin.com

The first part of email marketing is to get your visitor to opt-in your email list. Once they opt-in, the visitor becomes a prospect.

The second part of email marketing is to move the prospect along your marketing funnel towards them becoming a customer. An important element of that is relationship marketing done via trust.

Here are 20 strategies to get more response from your email marketing.

1. Build a targeted opt-in list.

2. Keep your messaging simple.

3. Make your messages personal.

4. Don’t mix content with promotions.

5. Email often.

6. Train your opt-in list.

7. Research everything.

8. Be honest.

9. Get to know your opt-in subscribers.

10. Segment and make targeted topic lists.

11. Email your customers via a separate list.

12. Make your customers feel special by giving them customer only coupons.

13. Be somewhat regular.

14. Split test html vs. plain text emails.

15. Pay attention to your “From” line.

16. Keep your email address consistent.

17. Make your subject lines interesting.

18. Don’t forget your “Thank you” page.

19. Offer bonuses.

20. Create a call to action each time.

There was a time when Linkedin was cool. Well, maybe “cool” is too strong of a word for this early social networking site. Let’s just say that Linkedin was *the* place to network as a business professional.

You sign up for Linkedin, you make connections with people you work with, you ask for a recommendation, you’re golden. One thing for sure, you made yourself search friendly to headhunters.

But that was yesterday. Today, the cool place to network socially and professionally is arguable Facebook. With an active member community of 500 million and growing compared to 50 million and shrinking at Linkedin, Facebook is the place to link up and link in.

So does Linkedin provide any value in a world dominated by Facebook? I think so.

Whereas Facebook is the Goliath, Linkedin is a niche site. They cater to white-collar professionals who are individual contributors or first level supervisors. These are the “actives” in the workforce. In other words, these are the people who do the actual work in a company. As such, they are prized for their technical skills. So Linkedin is the perfect place to advertise their skills.

Which leads me to how companies use social media to advertise nowadays. Advertising works best when it comes with social proof. By this, I mean testimonials and feedback from actual users of the advertised product or service. Yelp built an entire business model on social proof. Facebook is doing the same with their Business Page where you can “Like” it.

Now Linkedin Company Page allows you to do the same by showcasing “recommendations” from Linkedin members. The demographics of the Linkedin community would be the actual users of a product or service.

It’s not a new concept. Review sites have been around for years. Linkedin is playing catch up here. But it works, so more power to them.

Here is an example of HP’s Linkedin Company Page:

Example of Linkedin Company Page

Let’s assume you’ve already set up your own Facebook profile and a separate Facebook Page for your business. Maybe you’ve also created a Facebook Group that relates to a type of product or service that your business provides.

What are some ways that you can promote the special events your business sponsors? One way is by creating a Facebook Event. A Facebook Event is simply another type of Facebook page that describes an occurrence that will occur at a specific type and in a specific location. The “location” can be a real physical location or an internet web page.

You can use an Event page to promote a sale or limited time promotion that your business is conducting, or some other special event. This can be an effective way to publicize your business activities from time-to-time, because you can target people who are already connected to you or your business on Facebook. Since they’ve connected with you on Facebook, you already know that they’re interested in the kinds of products and services you provide.

Creating a new Event is easy. First log in to your business’ Facebook Page if you want the event to be sponsored by the business (or log in to your personal profile if you want to be the sponsor personally). Click the “Events” link near the top of the left navigation bar, and then click the “Create an Event” button at the top right of the main column of your events page.

Create a Facebook Event

You’ll then be asked to provide the name of the event, along with the time and place, a description of the event, and upload a photograph that relates to the event. You don’t need to include a finishing time if it’s an open-ended event. Finally, you need to decide which Facebook users to invite. You can either select individual guests from your friends list, or you can make the event completely public so that anyone on Facebook can see the Event and sign up to attend.

Create a Facebook Event

As with any successful business promotion on Facebook, the key is to not overdo it. For example, it’s appropriate to create an event to publicize seasonal sales or other special promotions you are conducting. On the other hand, you’ll probably alienate some of your followers if you create a new event every single day to publicize special prices on individual products.

It’s human nature to like being invited to things. Invitations to join make people feel special, and makes them feel like they’re a part of something. After receiving an invitation, the act of clicking the “I’m attending” button to accept the invitation is an affirmation of that person’s connection with the business that set up the event. By accepting the invitation they’re indicating their desire to align themselves with the event you’re conducting.

Of course, it’s not always easy to turn your Events and the accepted invitations directly into sales. But you can always evaluate your data to see which kinds of Events are most popular, and whether your Events are becoming more or less popular over time. Done correctly, using Facebook Events can be a great supplement to your other promotional activities.

Here’s an example of a Facebook events page:

Create a Facebook Event

If you are new to using Facebook marketing, I recommend you pick-up a free guide at:

Google’s Adsense program has been around since the early part of this decade. In that time, Adsense has generated millions in revenue for advertisers and much, much more for Google. Adsense gave Google both money and branding. Every time a web publisher hosts an Adsense ad, Google shows the sign, “Ads by Google” and gets paid by the advertiser per click or impression. The publisher also gets paid so it’s a win-win situation.

But just how much of a win has it been for the publisher? As an advertiser, I have an accounting of how much I pay Google per click or per impression on their content network. It used to be that you could advertise on Google’s content network for a little as a penny per click. Now a days, those penny clicks are all but gone — much like the penny arcades. Expect to pay 50 cents to several dollars per click now in order to get impressions on their content network.

So if I pay Google $1 per click, how much do they pay their publishers for hosting that ad? Up until a few days ago, nobody knew this information outside of Google. It was one of those Adsense secrets along with a great many other secrets that Google held closely like how they do their search algorithm.

I tried to guess the Adsense payout percentage. I have a size-able network of websites with Adsense Ads. Evey time someone clicks on the ads, I noted the payout amount in my Adsense account. The numbers varied according to the competition for that keyword at that moment in time. The numbers that I saw swung widely, even on the same website. For example, a click may pay 3 cents one day, and $3 per click on another day.

I tried to compare what I paid on Google Adwords for similar keywords, but without having access to Google’s data, my guesstimate was that they paid about 50% per click to me as the publisher. Alas, in the spirit of greater “transparency” according to the big G, I now know the answer to one of Google’s Adsense secrets … They pay 68% to the publisher.

Wow. That number is much higher than my guesstimate of 50%. I’m not complaining. I’m just surprised.

So should we all rush to build more Adsense sites? Not so fast. It’s curious that Google would choose to share this information right after they updated their ranking algorithm. The new algorithm would no longer rank “thin” websites optimized for long tail keywords so highly. If you know anything about another Adsense secret, it was to try and rank for the long tail. Hmmm…

If you are an Adsense publisher, let me know your thoughts on why Google would reveal one of their Adsense secrets at this time.

Marketing online is fraught with risks. One category is business risk. The other category is technical risk. Business risk is when you try to execute a digital marketing strategy and it fails. Technical risk includes the risk of not implementing your websites and/or scripts correctly. But technical risk also includes the risk from cyber-attacks. One of the most common form is viruses pretending to be a friendly program … like a trojan horse. This blog is about how to remove Antispyware Soft. It’s one of the latest to hit the Internet.

I was attacked by the Antispyware Soft virus today. It got onto my system by some software vulnerability. I’m not exactly sure how. Then again, it seems fairly easy to attack a Windows machine. Antispyware Soft quickly planted itself on my task bar as a “legitimate” antivirus software.

The first thing it did was to pop-up a security notice saying that one of my files was corrupted. It gave me the option to scan my system. Next, it said that my virus definition was out of date. So I needed to update antivirus software by clicking on the “update” icon.

Hmmm. Seems kind of fishy since I use Norton. So I read the error message carefully and noticed a grammatical error. It said, “…protect you computer…” This was another sign that something was amiss.

By now, five other warning messages had popped up. In addition, Windows IE was launched on my computer. I use Firefox.

This was wicked indeed… a virus masquerading as an antivirus software that could launch IE.

The next thing it took over was my Windows applications like Media Player. Antispyware Soft blocked the application every time I tried to launch it. Hmmm.

I ran a scan with Norton. While the scan ran, the rogue software kept popping-up warning messages over my Norton screen. Not good.

Luckily, I still had access to the Internet via my Firefox browser. Thank goodness for browser choices.

I searched and found http://www.2-spyware.com/remove-antispyware-soft.html.

That site provided detailed instructions on how to remove this pest.

In a nutshell, here is what I did to successfully remove Antispyware Soft:

1) Downloaded Malwarebytes Anti Malware (it’s free);
2) Restarted my computer;
3) Pressed F8 during the boot-up so that I could get the “Safe Mode” screen;
4) Selected “Safe Mode with Networking”;
5) Once in Windows Safe Mode, I installed Malwarebytes Anti Malware;
6) Ran a scan inside Malwarebytes;
7) The scan detected the rogue Antispyware Soft;
Deleted the infected files using Malwarebytes (The rogue files hid in my Users folder on my C drive. The file was called [some random characters]tssd.exe, e.g. adlfjsiewpertsse.exe.)
9) Rebooted my computer.

All is well again.

One more thought… I often wondered if software security companies released viruses into the wild so that they could be caught by the software security companies themselves… Nah. Too preposterous.

But this security scam comes pretty close. I wish you safe surfing.

When I speak with clients and online marketers, the one thing that comes up consistently is everyone wants more web site traffic. On the surface this makes perfect sense. Send more traffic to your web site and they will surely buy.

If life was only that easy online. Sure, brute traffic will generate more sales and/or opt-ins. But the question is how much did that traffic cost? If you spent $100 to generate your traffic, and your conversion value is $50, was the traffic worth it? On the surface, most web site owners would answer no.

If the answer was only that easy online. You see the hidden answer to that question is how much the web site owner was able to monetize from that customer after the first capture. Was he able to up-sell and cross-sell additional products and/or services to that customer over time? If the answer was yes, then there stands a chance that the $100 that the web site owner paid for that traffic could return a profit after all. If the answer was no, well then the $100 resulted in a $50 lost.

Web site traffic, you see, is only part of the equation. For many people, they see traffic as the only part of the equation because most web site owners are starving for it. If only they knew how “easy” it is to get traffic. They can take their pick of traffic from SEO, SMO, PPC, CPV, email drops, co-registration, mobile ads, banner ads, contextual ads, thank-you page ads, ezine ads, online videos, RSS placements, podcasts, blog commenting, forum posting, profile creation, press releases, articles, guest blogging, online classifieds, directories, pay-to-post, picture tags, pop-ups, print ads, radio ads, tv ads, … the list of traffic sources is long.

The meatier part of the equation is conversion. How well does that traffic convert to a sale or an opt-in after it hits your web site? The meatiest part of the equation, however, is the hidden part: How well can you monetize that conversion in the back-end? In other words, do you have a business system that maximizes the value that you deliver to your customer while at the same time is efficient enough to be replicated? And by the way, is it low cost?

The business system is the critical part of the online marketing equation that can set your business apart. Everything up to that part — keywords, traffic, niches — are all transparent. In other words, your competitors have full access to that data. What they can see and monitor, they will steal. Count on it. Your business system is hidden. Only you know what happens after the customer enters your system. And that is your secret sauce.

So stop worrying about getting more web site traffic. I’ve showed you that that part is easy and can be duplicated by your competitors. Instead, focus on the part that will bring you the most value to your business. In fact, I would argue that it is your business. And that would be your business system.