Amazon is challenging the lawfulness of New York State’s legislation that requires internet retailers to collect sales tax on purchases shipped to New York State residents.

Although Amazon does not have a physical presence in the state, New York is arguing that Amazon allows web publishers to receive commissions by promoting their items through their sites. By default this makes Amazon liable to collect taxes on its behalf for those affiliates who live in New York.

If Amazon lose their challenge there will be ramifications for many thousands of affiliate programs that are currently available. It would be interesting to see if New York State would extend this to every one of those affiliate programs, including those based outside of the United States.

Many of these affiliate owners will be hoping that Amazon wins this challenge. They are all caught in a catch 22 situation at present. Register to collect tax by the June 1 this year or face the prospect of having previous quarters audited. A damned if you do and damned if you don’t position.

This would raise a second interesting question. Can New York State tax officials audit the accounts of businesses registered and trading in another state, or for that matter, in another country? Certainly when it comes to international companies this tax has not been terribly well thought through.

In the mean time, every affiliate owner will be watching this case with a little unease. Hopefully it will be resolved quickly with a bit of common sense being applied. However, when it comes to litigation, speed is not an area where the law excels. When it comes to taxation, common sense never applies.

Affiliate programs are some of the best sources of inbound links online. By providing your affiliates with a link back to your website, you increase your link popularity, which in turn leads to higher search engine rankings. It can also increase your sales.

Since many of your affiliates will be people in your niche the inbound links from your affiliate program will pass search engine relevancy tests. Also, if some of your affiliates have high PageRank because they are trusted sites within your niche then that will give you an additional boost. And get a bunch of those types of links … well, the story just keeps getting better. That’s why affiliate programs can be such good sources of links.

While it is true that affiliate program links are good links, you don’t want to rely entirely on affiliate links. You also want to build links in other ways. The key to inbound link building is to be consistent over time and build solid links through a strategy that encourages other webmasters to link to you freely without you requesting them to. A blog can do that in so many ways. But so too can article marketing, forum posting, and other forms of link building and conversational marketing.

A reader at SEOBook asked a good question, “We were thinking of mirroring our website by giving affiliates subdomains with our content like xyz.oursite.com. Is this a good idea or a duplicate content nightmare?”

Aaron Wall gave a good response and it was the same thing I’d have said. Rather than tell you what he said, I’m just going to answer it the way I would.

Duplicate Content For Affiliates Is Bad
If you present your affiliates with the same information you have on your website and in your marketing communications then you are setting them up with duplicate content, which isn’t going to help them and if it doesn’t help your affiliates, it won’t help you. That’s why you should provide your affiliates with marketing tools, but leave the creative content up to them. In other words, banners and code for a variety of marketing icons are good (give them plenty of choices, styles, sizes, colors, etc.). But when it comes to the actual content, allow them to create their own.

What If Affiliates Misrepresent Me?
The obvious follow up question to that is, “What if they misrepresent me or don’t present my product or service in the right way?”

That’s a good question. The answer is they will likely not make a sale, and you won’t either. But people online know that your affiliates are separate from you. You likely do not want the sale if someone was looking for what the affiliate was actually promoting. An illustration would make this point better, I think:

You sell yellow widgets. One of your affiliates markets it as a gold widget. A searcher Googles “gold widgets” and finds your affiliate’s website. It looks pretty, does a good job of preselling, and drives traffic to your website. Ah, but when visitors get to your site they find that those widgets aren’t gold after all - they’re yellow. Now they’ve lost interest. Have you lost anything? No because those visitors weren’t really interested in yellow widgets anyway.

Now let’s say one of your affiliates does a real good job of preselling your yellow widgets. You rank on Page 2 of Google and your affiliate ranks on Page 1 for the key term “yellow widget.” He’s driving traffic to your website like crazy and you are making sales. Every third sale on your website, let’s say, is driven to your site by your affiliate. Are you happy about that? You should be, and your affiliate is likely smiling ear to ear. But the really important thing is that your customers are happy because they’re getting just what they wanted - the best of the best of the yellow widgets.

Affiliate marketing is really just a form of independent preselling. Your affiliates don’t work for you. The work for themselves. But they do sell your product. If they can’t market what you have effectively then they won’t make any money, but you’ll likely still get some recognition from their efforts. You may not make as many sales from their poor marketing, but their poor marketing likely won’t hurt you either. Ditch the duplicate content.

Do you create a lot of affiliate links? Do you create a lot of long links that you’d like to make shorter? If so then there is a free service that you can use to shorten those links, and more importantly, save your affiliate income.

Here’s the problem. You’re an affiliate for XYZ company. They send you affiliate code that you can use to earn income and when someone clicks on a link to go to XYZs website you’ll get paid if they buy something. But when someone mouses over the link they see the destination URL of that link. Some less than honorable people have figured out how to implement a script that redirects that affiliate link to their own affiliate program and steal your hard earned money. You need a way to protect that from happening.

The way to stop thieves from stealing your affiliate income is to protect it with a cloak. Link cloaking has become the way to protect affiliate income. No affiliate should go without it. The one service you need to protect all of your affiliate income is called Tinyurl and it’s free.

Just because you have an affiliate marketing page on your website to recruit affiliates so that they can do your sales work for you doesn’t mean you should toss SEO out the window. How are you going to get those affiliates if they don’t find your affiliate page?

The best way to optimize an affiliate marketing page for your niche is to optimize it for the words “affiliate marketing” in addition to your most profitable keyword. So if your most profitable keyword is “birds that sing” and you have an affiliate program you want to promote then SEO your affiliate program page around “birds that sing” and “affiliate program.” You will likely get traffic to that page for people looking for an affiliate program related to that keyword.

Another way you can optimize your site for your affiliate program is to optimize it for “affiliate program” and your parent keyword. In other words, if your site is about cockatiels then use “cockatiels affiliate program.” You’ll get traffic for people looking for affiliate programs related to cockatiels.

Of course, you don’t want to rely solely on organic traffic for your affiliate program. The best place to recruit affiliates is from your current customers. Advertise your affiliate program in your newsletter and in a prominent location on your website. Also promote it on your blog and through your other online marketing avenues. You might even run a pay per click campaign based on your affiliate program. How much is one good affiliate worth to you?

One often overlooked form of Internet advertising is affiliate marketing. Yet, affiliate marketing often provides the highest return on investment of any of the Internet marketing methods available. Your affiliates are out there working for you 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. They bring in the customers and you don’t have to pay them for their efforts until you close the sale. How beautiful is that?!

Brick Marketing offers a variety of affiliate marketing program set up and consulting packages. You can choose the right one for you. Prices range from $45 per hour to $899 per month. Some flat rate packages are also available. The services provided our affiliate marketing packages include:

• Affiliate Program Development and Enhancement for existing affiliate or new program launches
• Affiliate Program creation and management, launching and maintaining accounts
  hosted or on an affiliate network
• Creation and Initiation of affiliate program terms, sign-up forms, affiliate creatives, promotions, etc.
• Affiliate Program creation and management, launching and maintaining accounts that are hosted or on an affiliate network. Some of the networks we have managed and launched: Commission Junction, Linkshare, My Affiliate Program, LinkConnector, Share Results, ClickXchange and many more
• Affiliate Ongoing Promotion Management
• Super Affiliate Recruitment
• Monthly Affiliate Program Reporting

When it comes to your Internet marketing plan, don’t skimp. Affiliates have been known to bring in thousands of dollars for their customers and you can set up an affiliate marketing program that is productive, profitable, and easy to manage. Brick Marketing can help.

If you are an affiliate marketer then there are some things you want to keep in mind as you look for affiliate programs to join. Otherwise, you might do like some affiliate marketers and make the wrong choices. Most affiliate marketers make one of the following mistakes that cost them dearly in the long run:

• Research - If you don’t research your affiliate programs before you join them you will likely pick the wrong one and regret it later.
• Your own domain - Many affiliate rely too much on someone else’s domain name. Get your own domain and web hosting account. Don’t settle for next to nothing. It is very inexpensive to buy a domain ($10/year or less) and host it ($3-$10 per month).
• Do your own writing - You can hire a ghostwriter, but why would you? Write your sales copy yourself. Put your personality into it. Don’t let someone else define your business.
• Use the product - I can’t believe some people join affiliate programs without trying the product first. Actually, I can. But this just makes no sense. Your recommending the product or service. Don’t you want to know if it works?
• One affiliate program - Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Join more than one affiliate program.
• Don’t join too many affiliate programs - Some affiliate marketers make the opposite mistake and join too many programs. You won’t be able to focus and you’ll be ineffective at marketing all of them. Don’t do that to yourself.

I hope these help when you scout around for affiliate programs to join. You can avoid these mistakes with a little planning and effective advertising.

Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.

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Affiliate marketing is a new concept for many people. The idea is to hire and train a sales force that you don’t have to pay until they make a sale. It’s an idea whose time has come and because of the Internet it is possible for any business. It is also desirable and can produce tremendous results for your business.

But let’s draw a distinction between affiliate marketing and reselling:

A reseller is someone who buys your product or service and sells it to another party with a markup. That’s how they make their money. This type of relationship works real well for service businesses.

By contrast, an affiliate marketer is someone who pre-sells a product or service for someone else then sends the customer to the company he is marketing for to by a product. The affiliate usually has a code that identifies him as the seller whenever a sale is made. The company then pays the affiliate based on total sales over a period of time.

Both types of relationships have their pros and cons. I personally like affiliate marketing because it allows you to track your sales and you have more control over your product or service. A reseller can always change your product or service without your knowledge, which could produce some credibility issues for you down the road. On the other hand, with affiliate marketing, since the customer always comes to you to buy, you stay in control.

Three things to keep in mind with affiliate marketing:

• Develop your program before you start it - I can’t stress this enough. If you get your affiliate marketing program running before you’ve fully developed it you’ll run into problems for sure. You need to think about how often you’re going to pay your affiliates, how much commission you’re going to pay them, and what kind of materials you’re going to support them with. Don’t underestimate prior planning.
• Support your affiliates with effective sales material - Your affiliates are working hard for you. Give them the materials they need to be successful and you’ll see tremendous results. Take the time to create banner ads, graphics, and sales letters that they can use in their marketing efforts. Also, by running specials periodically, you can keep your affiliates juiced up and motivated.
• Pay enough to make it worth their while - Don’t offend your affiliates with a small commission. If your affiliates only make 10% per sale, they likely will not be motivated to sell your product or service. I recommend at least 30% and for most products, especially digital products, 50% is not out of the question. If you pay your affiliates well they will be motivataed to sell your product.

Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.

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Affiliate marketing has been around almost as long as the Web itself. Well, since the World Wide Web, anyway. Essentially, your affiliates are your sales people. They bring you business. You should treat them well.

From what I’ve seen, the best affiliate programs do three things:

• Compensate performance generously
• Reward recruiters
• Provide marketing collateral for the affiliates

You have to make affiliate efforts worth your affiliates’ time. What that means is compensation must be commensurate with the amount of time and energy your affiliates put into promoting you. That will be different from product to product, service to service, and between products and services. Generally, though, you want to compensate your affiliates with generous commissions. Some affiliate programs pay as much as 75%, but I think 50% for most products is reasonable and 30% for most services. What it all boils down to is the value each customer is worth to your business and that means, in most cases, more than just dollars and cents. You have to also look at future value of expected business transactions.

Another aspect of a quality affiliate program is the level of recruitment you encourage. You want your affiliates to bring you more affiliates. To encourage that you should have a two-tier pay out system. The second tier shouldn’t be much. A meager 5% over ride on the efforts of affiliates your direct line recruits can go a long way. But you should provide some reward to encourage growth of your organization.

Finally, you should create banners, link codes, and other marketing materials for your affiliates. This does two things. It makes it easy for your affiliates to promote you since they will spend their time on promotion rather than creation of the materials necessary to promote you. Secondly, you maintain control over your message, which is important because you don’t want your affiliates out there representing you in ways that might prove counterproductive.

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Affiliate programs are highly misunderstood. To successfully manage an affiliate program you’ve got to have a top-notch product and offer a level of support for your affiliates that they can’t get anywhere else.

Affiliates are your sales force. Most affiliate programs can succeed with just one or two affiliate members actively pursuing a strong marketing plan. Remember, the 80/20 rule applies to affiliate programs as it does anything else. This means that if you have 10 affiliates, 2 of them will likely account for 80% of your affiliate sales. But what do you care? You won’t have to pay any of them a commission until they bring you sales.

Here are a few tips for running a successful affiliate program:

• Make sure your product fills a niche in the marketplace
• Deliver quality in every aspect of your business
• Pay your affiliates well
• Provide affiliates with banner and marketing support
• Make your plan a two-tier plan if possible

If your product or service doesn’t fill a specific niche, no one will want it. Too many Internet entrepreneurs try to sell products that have been in the marketplace for too long. Instead of selling what everyone else selling, try selling something that no one else has. Fill a niche and people will seek you out.

Don’t just deliver a quality product, deliver quality service. People will never turn down quality.

Affiliate programs that succeed pay their affiliates well. You’ve got to make it lucrative for your affiliates or they won’t spend one minute trying to promote your product. Money talks. I recommend at least 30% for most products. Services can get by on less, but if you sell a product then you should offer a hefty commission for your sales associates. If your product is digital you’ll get 100% of the profits, which means you can likely afford 50% commissions for your affiliates. Ask yourself this question: Would you rather have 50% of 100 sales or 100% of 1?

Support your affiliates like you would your customers. Don’t expect them to come up with their own advertising and marketing collateral. Do it for them. The more you give them to succeed with, the more time and energy they will put into promoting your products.

Two-tier affiliate programs are awesome. History shows that they do much better than single tier programs. A two-tier affiliate program pays your affiliates commissions for sales made of affiliates recruited by them. In other words, if I recruit my brother Bob to be an affiliate of your product and he sells 100 more widgets than I do, I still get a commission based on Bob’s performance. This benefits you because you make more sales. It benefits Bob because he makes money. And it benefit me because I get a little scrape off the top as well. Your second tier affiliates shouldn’t make as much as your first tier affiliates. Make the commission somewhere in the 2-5% range. Some affiliates are actually better at recruiting good sales people than selling themselves so a good recruiter can make a decent income just by recruiting a handful of top-notch sales people for you. Pay them a little something to show your appreciation.

Affiliate programs are a great way to expand your business. In fact, many entrepreneurs say they make more sales through their affiliate program than they do through any other method of marketing.

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