Affiliate Insider : feature

Illinois To Get Hit With "Amazon Tax"?

Mike Phillips — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:54:00 GMT

Illinois Amazon affiliates received an unwelcome email last night. Illinois, it seems, is positioned to pass the so-called "Amazon Tax." And Amazon is holding nothing back in voicing its opinion on the matter. The email begins:

We regret to inform you that the Illinois state legislature has passed an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that, if signed by Governor Quinn, would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with Illinois-based Associates.

And continued:

Over a dozen other states have considered essentially identical legislation but have rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states' residents.

Governor Quinn's office may be reached here.

Internet Tax Bill (HB 3659) passed the Illinois Senate on January 5, and the House on January 6. All that's left is for Quinn's signature. In short, this means that websites which have affiliates in Illinois will now be required to pay taxes on every sale that originates from those affiliates. The solution for Amazon is to cut off affiliate relationships in the state to avoid paying the taxes.

But Amazon isn't the only one. CouponCabin.com and FatWallet.com are two others that will be affected. FatWallet.com told the Chicago Tribune that they are "actively looking to leave Illinois."

While legislators aim to shrink the budget gap, opponents believe it will do just the opposite - that companies like Amazon and FatWallet will leave, taking jobs and commissions with them, while the small business affiliates lose income and, therefore, pay less in income taxes to the state.

Five First-Tier Travel Affiliate Programs to Consider

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:50:00 GMT

Few Website Magazine readers will be launching their own travel related services in the coming year but as the economy continues to rebound and as consumers are becoming increasingly likely to spend their discretionary income hitting the road perhaps they should.

Before entering any vertical however it will benefit you to know which are the top travel affiliate programs. As there are hundreds of programs to consider, our advice here at WM (as always) is to partner up with the biggest and most reputable brands first and venture into lesser known programs once you have established some modest revenue streams.

The following travel affiliate programs are in no particular order:

- Priceline, which uses Commission Junction offers a variety of travel affiliate programs for marketers to profit from selling airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars and full on vacation pacakges. Affiliates can sell travel products, build their own branded travel web site or access Priceline's inventory through XML and receive modest commissions (generally around 3%). Consider profiling the cruises for an average $45 per payout.

- Hotwire, which uses LinkShare, offers its affiliate 2% commission for hotel and rental car booking and the same for discount aire and package bookings. Affiliates can also earn $2 for every regularly priced airline ticket. The minimum monthly payout is just $10 and commissions for bookings are made within 30 days of the referral.

- Expedia, which uses Commission Junction, enables affiliate to earn on sales of air tickets, hotels, car rentals, cruises, vacation packages and activities. Commissions range from 2.0% to 5.5% and performance incentives are available.

- Travelocity, which also uses Commission Junction, features similar products (air, hotel, car, packages, crusises) and pays out between 2% and 6% with cash payouts for airline tickets ($3), Cruises ($30) and travel insurance ($1).

- Orbitz, the only other vendor using LinkShare in our list, enables its affiliate the ability to sell standard travel offerings including Air ($3 for each ticket), hotels (3%-5%), Car ($4 per transaction) and cruises ($25 flat transaction rate). Orbitz also offers 2.5% commisions on vacation packages and 5% for activities and services.

LinkShare Reports Record Growth During Cyber Week

Linc Wonham — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 21:53:00 GMT

Performance marketing leader LinkShare has reported record year-over-year growth during the Thanksgiving holiday shopping period with same store sales increasing more than 50 percent on Black Friday and more than 45 percent on Cyber Monday.

Strong growth was seen across a wide variety of product categories with the strongest performing segments being luxury, apparel and personal care, which all saw triple digit gains year-over-year.

LinkShare network data also reflects the larger trend of consumers starting their research and holiday buying earlier in the year. Beginning in the first half of November, shoppers began their holiday research and shopping then continued right through Thanksgiving weekend making it a full Cyber Week.

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday remained the best performing days for LinkShare advertisers and publishers, the Saturday and Sunday in between were also very strong, seeing a 58 percent year-over-year increase in sales during this time.

The performance of the LinkShare network also continues to significantly outpace overall retail e-commerce growth. According to comScore, overall retail sales year-over-year were up 9 percent on Black Friday and 16 percent on Cyber Monday, compared to 50 percent and 45 percent in the LinkShare Network, respectively.

10 Must-have WordPress Plugins for Affiliates

Linc Wonham — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:25:00 GMT

Every affiliate marketer has his or her own goals that require the best tools designed to meet those specific needs. Some tools, however, are more difficult to live without than others, such as the following plugins for any affiliate operating a blog or website on WordPress:

1. All in One SEO Pack
An out-of-the-box plugin that’s easy to install and use for beginners but also can be fine-tuned simply by more advanced users. Works with Scribe SEO to optimize any WordPress blog for search engines and is the only plugin to provide SEO integration for WordPress e-commerce sites. The Standard version is free and the Pro Version is currently on sale for $39.

2. Ultimate Google Analytics
A highly configurable free plugin that adds Google Analytics JavaScript to all of your pages so that no theme editing is required. The simple configuration screen will be sufficient for most users, although a wide range of tweaking and tuning is available in the advanced settings.

3. AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button
Another free plugin that allows you to share, bookmark and email your pages through Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Digg, Delicious and more than 100 other social media sites. Now comes with Facebook Like and Twitter Tweet buttons, and the email tab works well with virtually any Web-based email or desktop program.

4. DataFeedFile
An open-source plugin, DateFeedFile’s Featured Product plugin allows Web marketers to run price comparisons on products from different merchants. Affiliates merely select a product, compare the prices and choose the one with the most earning potential for their WordPress site or blog.

5. WordPress Mobile Pack
A mobile switcher, themes, widgets and administration panel are just some of the tools included in this kit that will help mobilize and WordPress site or blog. This free plugin not only provides visitors with an enhanced mobile version of your site but also allows site owners to make edits on the fly and post to their WordPress blogs from their own devices.

6. Newsletter
Also free, this plugin helps you collect subscribers via either a single or double opt-in process and has a simple visual composer to create and send the newsletter to subscribers through email. Emails are sent one-per-user, allowing subject lines and body text to be customized if desired.

7. Search Meter
Another free plugin that tracks what your visitors are searching for on your site. Full details of recent searches are available, as are statistics for the previous day, week or month, including whether or not users are finding what they are looking for.

8. Short URL Plugin
This free plugin not only allows you to shorten long URLs into more easily manageable ones but it also keeps track of how many times each link has been clicked. Useful for managing downloads and tracking outbound links, and the latest version also includes pagination of links, easier access of htaccess (permalinks) and allows administrators to pass variables to their redirects.

9. All in One Video Pack
This plugin includes every video and rich-media functionality required to upload, record and import videos to your pages, edit and remix content with an online video editor, enable video responses and much more. Kaltura covers all of the hosting and streaming costs for free up to 10 GB.

10. Exclude Pages
An extremely helpful free plugin that adds a checkbox called “include this page in menus”, which is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the page will not appear in any listings of pages, which includes and is usually limited to your page navigation menus.

Even if you are not presently a WordPress user, take the time to check out these and some of the thousands of other available plugins. You may just find yourself being inspired to add a new affiliate site on the fastest-growing open-source CMS in the world.

Meta-Search Engine For Affiliate Offers

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 21:00:00 GMT

One of the many challenges for affiliate marketers is finding the right offer (on the right network) without spending hours doing so. You might be thinking to yourself, "There has to be a better way than scouring multiple networks, right?" Well, there is now.

Atma Links has released an affiliate marketing meta-search engine that streamlines the time intensive process of manually affiliating links. The service works by aggregating products (much like a meta-search engine) across all of the major affiliate networks to deliver a single destination for affiliate marketers. Publishers can not only discover new products but, with one click (free registration require), receive new affiliate links to those items.

"Clearly, there are a number of product search engines on the market. However, we wanted to build the first open search engine designed specifically for affiliate marketers. We expect that this Alpha version will significantly expedite the process of manually affiliating links. Going forward, we are planning to add more features to the discovery piece of our search engine, equipping affiliates with deeper product metrics and insights."