Are you an affiliate marketer living and working in California? If so , this concerns you as it does me. Listen up…

You may or may not already be aware, but there is a potentially dangerous bill looming on the horizon that may seriously damage the businesses of California based affiliate marketers.

Our current economic recession has led politicians to look for new ways to collect revenue for the states.  Assembly Bill 178 proposes to levy a sales tax on online retailers who have affiliates that generate gross revenue of $10,000 or more per quarter who reside in California.

A similar bill was passed in New York in June of 2008 known in the affiliate industry as the “Amazon Tax”. But New York was only the guinea pig and set the stepping stones for other states to soon follow suit. Currently, California, Hawaii, and Minnesota all have similar tax bills that will severely impact our businesses as affiliate marketers unless we act.

So just how might this affect you if you are a California based affiliate? Well for some, it could put you out of business, literally…

Let’s say for instance, that you have a kick ass PPC campaign that is generating an average gross of  $20,000/mo. This is your bread and butter campaign and you’ve put all your eggs into it. It works on autopilot, makes money hand over fist. But….you’ve been unable to repeat your success with another campaign and are barely breaking even as you test new offers looking for another winner.

But much to your misfortune and the wrath of AB178, the advertiser to whom you are making a crap pile of money every month decides that they doesn’t want to pay a sales tax to California and hands you your walking papers. Goodbye $20K per month, and unless you have great credit or are an avid savor…goodbye affiliate business!

It is unfortunate, but many advertisers won’t fight the lobbyists and will dump the affiliates rather than have to pay the tax on income generated by that affiliate. Overstock.com did exactly this to their affiliates in New York.

So what can we do?

We’ll for starters, get the full background on this issue.

1)     Read The Bill
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0151-0200/ab_178_bill_20090202_introduced.html

2)      Read this Article in Revenue Today
http://www.revenuetoday.com/newsletters/aff/032609.html?mtcCampaign=6739

Take action!

3)      Sign the PMA Petition To Oppose the Bill (link on PMA dead, please send me new link if anyone finds it 04/09)
http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/california-assembly-bill-178/sign-our-group-letter/

4)     Send Your Own Letter (Using this template)
http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/california-assembly-bill-178/send-a-letter-to-your-local-assembly-representative/

5)      Join the PMA lobbying day in Sacramento on March 31st.
Email: lobby_day@performancemarketingalliance.com

6)      Contact Your Local Representatives:
Californai State Assembly, California State Senate, Twitter Schwarzenegger, Revenue and Taxation Committee Members
- Nancy Skinner – Tel: (916) 319-2014 (staffer: Liz Mooney)
- Charles Calderon – Tel: (916) 319-2058 (staffer: Tom White)

• Leave directs comments on the bill here.

With the growth of affiliate Meetup groups such as Meetup202, California has an affiliate force to be reckoned with and we can probably make some serious headway in getting this bill rejected if we all do our part in getting the word out. Be sure to sign the petition above and pass this information on.

Blog about it, Twitter it, blast your email list or meetup group…do whatever it takes to fight this AB178!

My first post of 2009! And you thought I had given up already on my blog…if I was “employed”, I’d be fired by now I guess…but luckily I’m still Masterless in 2009! I’ll try to keep this short, but just wanted to do an overall update before I get back to regular posting.

Affiliate Summit West: Vegas Style
Well, I started off 2009 well by attending Affiliate Summit West in Vegas. (Yeah, no ASW blog post with pics of debauchery…next time). As you can imagine, it was a blast. I didn’t network as much this time. I mainly attended for the parties, and the chance to further get to know some of the affiliates I had met in Boston. It was a good excuse to get away from the computer for a few days, have a few drinks with my affiliate buddies, and of course…meet Mystery from the Pickup Artist (only kidding, dude look homo!). But mainly ASW was a good way to motivate and energize me with ideas for 09′.

My main take aways are that I need to start using Facebook & social media. As much as I hate Google Adwords on some days, I spend the majority of my time and money on Google since creating and testing campaigns is fast. I totally ignored social media at my own peril being that most of the big affiliates I met at ASW were banking on Facebook, not Google. So 09′ is about diversifying and getting new traffic.

New Year’s Resolutions:
One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to get and stay much more organized. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m pretty scattered with projects and ideas. I have tons of projects that I started, then stopped, then started back up again. If I’d been more focused from the get go, I’m sure I’d be much more profitable.  My inbox is a mess, and my financial housekeeping is horendous. But I recently formed an S-Corp, so I’m commited to getting my financial house in order and knowing exactly where I’m spending my money. It’s a challenge, but I’m forcing myself to become more disciplined with my daily work routine (to limit my play time, Skype, Wicked Fire reading, etc).  I’ll still take 20 minutes out of my day to play some Call of Duty, but that’s it!

As for the future of MasterlessSamurai.com…
You can probably tell that I’ve finally ditched the UBD Moneymaker theme. I’m on a new theme temporarily until I outsource Unique Blog Designs to do a complete custom overhaul of this site.I apologize in advance if you see promotions for crappy ebooks like “Blogging to the Bank”. I simply haven’t had the time to fully customize this new theme with my own touch.

I’m thinking to model my new design based off of a very cool business card that my buddy Matt of WebPrint20 created for me for ASW. Check it out below!

[imagebrowser id=3]

With regard to posts…I’ll keep the tutorials coming. I’d like to implement an easier way to do Camtasia screencasts with more video posts since type up tutorials are so time consuming. I may not post that often simply because I’m very busy with my own projects (taking action is key), but when I do post I’ll try to make it worth your time. I’d like to think  my blog is different from many of the affiliate blogs out there. You’ll never see a screenshot of my earnings. I won’t waste my time with the name calling that tends to plaque this industry. And of most importantly….no “dick rolls” (We’ll maybe just a few) If I can help a few people along their affiliate journey, that’s great. (you can repay me by signing up to some CPA networks under my referral link

Affiliate Marketing 2009
As far as the future of affiliate marketing…it’s here to stay in my opinion. At ASW I did hear some fear that we should make the money while it lasts because it won’t be around much longer. I see affiliate marketing as wee’ young teenager that just discovered his first pubic hair. This industry is still new and relatively unknown to most people, and with the economy in shambles, only more people will be drawn to “how to make a living online”.

I do see the scammy / shady offers either getting harder to make money with, or regulated. Google has pretty much removed most of the Acai Berry blogs, though you can still promote Acai with other types of landing pages. Facebook has become more laxed with their gestapo type oversight recently, so get your $25K Obama stimulus check now!

People now have less disposable income and are being more careful with their purchases, so figuring out where and what people are buying is key. It’s not too late to enter affiliate marketing for the first time. In fact, now is a great time since so many people are out of work, at home on the computer more looking for solutions to their problems. And tools abound…you can buy a tool that with simplify or automate almost anything.

I apologize for no posts in January. As many cool ideas as I had planned, I couldn’t bring myself to sit down and post since I’ve been working non-stop with ideas from Affiliate Summit. I’m not rich, so making money for my business will always take priority over posting free blog content. But when I do post, I hope there is always something informative for you to take away. Are you subsribed to my RSS feed?

I’m off to San Francisco for Meetup202. More cool stuff coming this week.

- SamuraiWes (a new nickname I seem to have acquired at Affiliate Summit)