Colorado Advertising Tax UPDATE

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Josh Todd

Yesterday was the meeting of the Finance Committee, the group of State House Representatives that are in charge of hearing the case for and against the new tax laws increases that are on the table. This of course includes HB-10-1193, the “Out-of-State Retailers Sales Tax” bill. Nice name they came up for it, eh? I liked it better when it was the “Amazon Tax”.

My Sr. Affiliate Manager and I headed over to the Capitol to show our opposition, and we really didn’t know what to expect. I thought we could possibly be one of a handful of people that showed up, sealing our fate before the hearing even began. However, as we approached the building, there was already a crowd of familiar faces gathered outside. There were representatives from several CPA networks including Affiliate.com and HybrydAds, and a bunch of affiliates as well. All in all there were well over 100 people that turned out in opposition of the bill.

The initial plan was to get into the hearing room, sign the sheet in opposition so we could be counted, and then stay for the hearing to see if anything interesting happened. Unfortunately, after 2 hours of debate, the Finance Committee was not even half way through discussing the first bill on the list, and HB-10-1193 was the 5th in line. I ended up leaving to get back to work once my name had been added to the opposition list. I heard today that the Committee was in session until 2 a.m. and they still hadn’t got through all of the bills on the list.

Long story short, the Committee passed the bill on to a final vote by the Colorado State House of Representatives. That should be happening either tomorrow or early next week. The next step is to do another email blast of the House Democrats to try and sway them. The House Republicans are already voting in opposition of all the bills that are tax increases.

If you want to help, let me know before about noon tomorrow (Friday) and I will get you the list of House Democrats to email and otherwise harass. The battle rages on!

Stop the Colorado Advertising Tax NOW!

Posted on January 23, 2010 by Josh Todd

Breaking News!

The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) is reporting that a Colorado advertising tax bill (HB-1193) is going to be presented to Committee next week. Now is the time for anyone living in Colorado and working in the Affiliate Marketing and Online Advertising industries to get ready to make your voice heard!

If you haven’t heard about it before, the advertising tax (also called the “Amazon Tax”) is an attempt to bring some income back into the budgets of the states by forcing online merchants and companies to charge sales tax for online purchases and sales. The additional paperwork and accounting trouble that this brings is enough to make major companies like Amazon opt to kick out all the affiliates that live in a state with the advertising tax.

Whether you are an affiliate, a network, a merchant, or an agency, this tax could have a huge impact on your business, and it’s not going to be a positive one. Even if you aren’t personally involved in the industry, you might have family and friends that are, and you can still make your voice heard.

The main need right now is for people to send an email to decision makers. It only takes a second to send an email, and it could have a potentially massive effect on whether this bill passes or not. The PMA has been effective in squashing similar bills in other states, and now it’s our turn in Colorado.

To get involved, all you need to do is register your support with the PMA so that they can keep you updated when the time comes to take action. Simply go to http://performancemarketingassociation.com/advocateform.html and fill in the form. It’s free, you don’t have to join the PMA or anything like that, it’s just a mailing list so that they can tell us who to email and even give us templates to make it super easy.

Together we can stop the advertising tax!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

2010: Bold Predictions for the Future

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Josh Todd

In 2010, I believe we are going to see some serious changes in the online world, and the affiliate industry. There were definitely some changes brewing throughout 2009, both on the Affiliate side of the game (see the Oprah lawsuits) and the Advertiser side of the game (merchant account madness). Neither of these are the death knell of Affiliate Marketing, but they certainly gave the impression that business would not just continue as usual in 2010. Will Affiliates be looking for new offers to promote when all the rebills suddenly dry up? Will the FTC be cracking down on Affiliate Bloggers for littering their posts with unmarked Affiliate links? Doubtful. Every time this industry and its denizens have to comply or die, they find a way to do it and still make money, if not even more than before. They are a very resourceful bunch.

Another big shakeup that is coming (in my opinion) is in the world of Traffic Sources. Affiliates have complained for years now about Google’s terrible practices of banning its own Advertisers with no notice, killing profitable campaigns with Quality Score changes, and just flat pushing people around. A viable alternative became very popular in 2009 with Facebook Ads, but that opened up a whole new can of worms. Facebook has been just as fickle as Google about what types of offers they allow, and the approval process is bad enough to give full time Affiliates recurring nightmares of the DENIED status.

So what’s next? One word: mobile. AdMob has been busy building the biggest mobile advertising network over the last couple of years, and although some Affiliates have tested it, there aren’t a whole lot of mobile-targeted offers to promote just yet. But don’t worry, that is on the horizon and approaching fast. Especially since Google just snapped up AdMob, easily taking a big piece of the mobile pie for themselves. Also, in an interesting move, Apple has put it in a bid to buy Quattro Wireless. Apparently they were interested in AdMob too, since many of the ads are served on the iPhone, but Google beat them to the punch. It will be interesting to see how Apple handles the responsibility of running an ad network, especially in the tumultuous new field of mobile.

Will it be more of the same, just on a smaller device? Will it be a revolution in marketing akin to the initial launch of Google AdWords and Facebook Ads? Or perhaps it will open up new and expansive opportunities that our feeble marketing brains haven’t even thought of yet. Whatever the case, 2010 is going to be an interesting year, and a brilliant start to the new decade.

Oh yeah, and Facebook is going down. That’s my doomsday prediction.

Dealing With FTC Rules For Bloggers

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Josh Todd

Since it is December and the new FTC rules for bloggers have taken effect, I have been looking for the easiest way to make everything compliant. I know that it’s probably a long shot that the FTC would ever take an interest in my blog, but better safe than sorry, since I found a pretty easy way to do it. Of course you could write your own custom disclosure like Shoemoney does, but who wants to take the 15 minutes to write it…That’s where CMP.ly comes in. They have created a simple way to add the proper disclosure to your page, similar to the URL shorteners that you know and love. CMP.ly is totally free, and there are 5 levels of their standard disclosure, as well as a custom one that you can create if you want to sign up for an account and take the time to do it. For most people though, the standard ones will work fine. They are:

CMP.ly/0 – No Connection, Unpaid, My Own Opinions (Legit post)
CMP.ly/1 – Based Upon a Review Copy (Review copies plz?)
CMP.ly/2 – Given a Sample (Sample of what?)
CMP.ly/3 – Paid Post (Zac Johnson’s favorite)
CMP.ly/4 – Employee/Shareholder/Business Relationship (Matt Cutts’ favorite)
CMP.ly/5 – Affiliate Marketing Links (My favorite)

So it might not be the sexiest thing to spend an hour doing, adding these links to all your blog posts. But it’s not that much work and it’s definitely not worth it to get busted by the FTC in case some young buck in the department is trying to make a name for himself by taking down the evil affiliate bloggers that are polluting the online world for all the rest of us. (/sarcasm)

Google Launches YouTube Video Targeting Ads

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Josh Todd

Google has just launched a brand new type of ad unit for AdWords that is now in Beta, called the YouTube Video Targeting Tool. Every time there is a new ad marketplace that opens up, there is a massive displacement that can be taken advantage of by savvy marketers. The people that jump in early are going to have a definite advantage in this game.

One of the coolest things about the new YouTube Video Targeting Tool is that you can get very specific with your targeting, right down to selecting individual videos. You can also target by demographics, channels, and some other methods.

You can choose from two different ad units, InVideo Overlay and In-Stream Video. The InVideo Overlay can be setup as Text Ads or 468×60 image ads. The In-Stream Videos are a “15/30 second in-stream video + image companion”. I’m not exactly sure what that boils down to, since I haven’t had the chance to actually put any ads live yet.

People have been marketing via YouTube for quite a while now, especially in the Ringtones space. The tried-and-true method is to rip the music video of your favorite artist, put a watermark on it with your Domain leading to the Ringtone offer, and try to get as many views as possible through both natural and artificial means. This method has become less and less effective as YouTube has been getting wise and closing some of the loopholes used to inflate views to videos and game the rankings. This new Video Targeting marketplace could be a game-changer for people that have been looking for a way to have a sustainable business model on YouTube without worrying about the impending Account Bans and Video Bans that come with the old method.

The only odd thing I noticed when playing with the interface is that when I searched for some of the YouTube mega-hit videos like the “JK Wedding Dance” and the infamous “Leroy Jenkins” video, they didn’t appear in the list. Also, most of the videos that were in the list seemed to have relatively low view counts. I’m assuming that this is because the program is in Beta still, and hopefully the big videos will be fair game once the program has the kinks worked out.

So what are you waiting for? Head over to http://google.com/videotargeting and check it out!

The Curve Ball

Posted on November 20, 2009 by Josh Todd

In the affiliate marketing game, you get thrown some major curve balls. Usually these only happen once or twice a year, sometimes more in a really bad year. It’s when the status quo gets shaken up. Things that you took for granted are either gone or severely changed, and suddenly your income is taking a major hit. Usually the curve ball happens when a traffic source dries up or gets wise to the ways that you have been exploiting it.

Google loves to throw curve balls in the form of “quality score updates” that destroy your campaigns and take up a bunch of your time. The latest one was thrown by Facebook after the Techcrunch Scamville Post (sorry Arrington, no link love here) and the follow ups that have been the talk of the industry this entire month. It’s one thing to hear about it on a blog, and it’s another thing entirely to have it affect your business in a very real way. As a network owner, the Facebook shakeup certainly put a large dent in our bottom line.

But that’s where my favorite part of the affiliate marketing business comes in: adapting to change. The people in this industry have an uncanny ability to adapt and update their business models to deal with the ever-changing online landscape, and this is no different. Sure things will be slow for a while, but unlike your Average Joe in a 9 to 5 job, we have power to do something about it. When Average Joe gets sent a curve ball, like getting laid off for example, it is devastating. Suddenly his income is gone and he is completely at the mercy of somebody else to get it back. He has to find another company to hire him and demonstrate to them that he is worth the risk. All affiliates have to do is reach inside themselves, grab the motivation it takes to get things going again, and get back to work.

That’s why I love this business. Sometimes it takes a curve ball to realize that there is a whole new opportunity right around the corner, or an income stream that you may have overlooked when your steady campaign was rolling. At the end of the day, you are in control. It’s your business and you are the boss. Even if you are working 80 hours a week for yourself, that’s better than working 40 for someone else. Next time you are thrown a curve ball, remember the alternative.

Ad-Tech: Day 1 is for Posers

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Josh Todd

Ad-Tech NY 2009 has come and gone, and I had the pleasure of flying out to NYC from sunny CO to check it out. This was the first Ad-Tech show to take place at the Javits Convention Center, since their contract with the hotel ran out. This was a good thing, since the entire Exhibit Hall could be on one floor and it felt very alive for the entire show.

My partner and I were joking that “Day 1 is for Posers”, because we got so much quality networking done on Day 2, without the massive registration lines and aisle blockage that you typically get on Day 1. For me and my company, it was a very successful trip and we are very excited about the next few months.

We even got to enjoy some time off at a live taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and a great afterparty at Pacha NYC. and a cool stop at the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza (including the weird/trippy/geeky/awesome Breezeway Interactive Light Display room). Instead of showing you boring pics of the Exhibit Hall and close-ups of the food we ate, here are some of the highlights of the trip for me:

Times Square from roof of 30 Rock

More NYC Skyline from 30 Rock

Blue Panel in the Breezeway Room (30 Rock)

Breezeway: The Coolest Room EVER

Breezeway Control Panel

Outside NBC Studios

Stilt-walking Clown at Pacha NYC

Dance Floor at Pacha NYC (Yankees on TV)

More Pacha NYC Madness

How To Write A Post About Local Affiliate Marketing

Posted on October 16, 2009 by Josh Todd

During the last few months, there has been a rash of blog posts cropping up left and right about local affiliate marketing. There have been good ones and bad ones and then all the guest posts by Dennis Yu. All of that aside, if you are an affiliate blogger then you owe it to yourself to write one of these bad boys. Here’s how it is done…

1. Tell your readers how there is a whole new world of affiliate marketing right in their backyard, where they can be their own boss and not have to worry about the big bad networks and advertisers scrubbing all of their leads.

2. Make sure to mention that Dentists, Lawyers, Massage Therapists, Insurance & Real Estate Agents and anyone else who commonly works off of referrals are the best worst possible candidates because they understand the value of a good lead.

3. Explain to them that this is going to take some good old fashioned salesmanship on their part, because they most likely have not harnessed the power of the internet yet. If that doesn’t scare them away, then mention that there will always be squabbles over what counts as a lead at the end of the month.

4. Bring up the fact that Google Voice is amazing and that you have been using it for local lead gen forever, even though 99% of your readers can’t get an invite.

5. Throw some massive numbers around, like how the keyword “San Francisco DUI Attorney” is going for over $20 per click on the search engines. If you have the stones, substitute in your own keyword or niche to scare them away from competing with you.

6. ???

7. Profit! Enjoy shooting fish in a barrel until the next wave of young pups learns what you have been up to and spoils all the ROI for you.

Day Parting & Campaign Caps with Zango

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Josh Todd

Have you ever been testing out a new PPV campaign with a budget of $25 a day and found that it’s all used up before 5pm? This is one area that PPC withGoogle AdWords has spoiled us: you can choose whether you want Standard or Accelerated ad spend, and with Standard it will evenly price out your clicks through out the day. Most PPV networks do not do this.

Today I noticed that with Zango you can actually do day parting, which is choosing which hours of the day you want your ads to be displayed. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend turning this on right away if you are testing a new campaign, but it certainly is handy if you are blowing through your daily budget without getting any conversions. In many verticals, it is not until the evening hours that they really start converting. People are home from work, kids are home from school, people are surfing the net without worrying about the boss looking over their shoulder. Besides, it’s more likely that the home computer is where the AdWare client is installed anyway.

To do this in Zango, just login to your account, click on the campaign name you want to add day parting to and click Edit Campaign. Right above the Save Changes button you will see a new link called Advanced Options. Click this and it will pop up a window with all the different days of the week and hours of the day. You can also turn specific days of the week off, like if you only wanted to run your ads during the weekend.

Along with day parting, there are also Campaign Caps on this menu. This will let you set a daily budget for specific days which overrides the Campaign-level daily budget. This is great if you are finding that certain days provide a large amount of conversions, and you want to crank up the ad spend to take advantage.

It may not seem like much, but little tools like this can really help you optimize your campaigns and squeeze every last bit of ROI out of your PPV traffic.

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