Archives for August 2008

NewEgg Stops Collecting NY Tax

August 24, 2008 by

Sales Tax ToddleIs online retailer NewEgg starting a war by ubruptly stopping their collection of sales tax in the state of NY?  They’ve obviously heard about it from their customers which is what spurred the change.  Basically, the state of NY decided that they couldn’t trust their residents to pay a use tax on items purchased out of state for in state use, so they’ll just make the retailer collect those taxes for them.

I can’t say that NY shouldn’t get the money, but making the retailers collect it is a bit much.  Especially when they have no discernable presence in your state.  They’ve (NY) claimed that because the retailers have affiliates that reside in NY, that they then have a presence in the state.  Of course, the retailers have lashed back with their ToS in many cases and the fact that the affiliates have no authorization to act as agents of the retailers.

And while that is true in the legal sense, I think that as affiliates we do have some unspoken (thus, not legal) authorization to sell for the company.  In fact, if we didn’t sell for the company, we wouldn’t make much money from them.  Not that it matters much to an affiliate if Amazon or NewEgg has to collect sales tax.  But what could make a difference is if NY’ers decided to find the rogue retailers to shop at.  NewEgg seems to have aligned itself in that way, but we’ll see what happens when NY responds.

NY seems to me to be the one state that operates more like a business than any other state.  The mayor of NY city has almost as much power as the Governor. With good reason, of course, as NY City is huge in comparison with any other NY city.  Potentially, the state could begin firewalling out these companies that refuse to follow the law. That would be a mistake, but I could see them trying it.  What they really need to do is to find a way to convince people to voluntarily give up the use tax on the items they buy online.  And since that isn’t going to happen with any regularity any time soon, they’ll keep on fighting the retailers to make them pay up.  I wonder how long before the lawyers fees for the state surpass the expected income from the extra taxes being collected.  It doesn’t take long to rack up $50 million in lawyers fees in NY.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , ,

Online Income for July 2008

August 8, 2008 by

July was certainly a better month than June was.  Overall, about 65% better!  A couple of increases and a large payment from TNX.net made for a pretty good jump.  I don’t expect all of it to carry over into August, but still look for a pretty good month.  Unless something changes drastically, it’ll probably be down from July, but good still.  Short story shorter, here’s the numbers.

  • TLA: $66.70
  • Adsense: $144.92
  • Amazon: $21.15
  • eBay Affiliate: $6.23
  • Kontera: $58.26
  • ClixGalore: $10.00
  • TNX: $112.06

Grand Total: $419.32

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , ,

Performancing Ads Delivers on Ad Marketplace

August 3, 2008 by

PerformancingAdsAre you using Performancing Ads yet?  You should be.  The marketplace is still relatively young and uncrowded.  I had barely had my site listed in the marketplace for 10 minutes before I sold my first ad spot.

The ad spots are all 125×125 spots, which have become oh so popular in the last year or so.  Most templates are already set up for them.  And getting signed up is a piece of cake.  I was able to get signed up and the code inserted in under 10 minutes.  And I was able to do all that and sell a spot in under 30!  That’s quick!

So, what’s the lowdown on revenue share?  They share 80%.  So, for every $1 in ad revenue, you get $0.80 and they get $0.20.  Pretty good for a professionally done ad marketplace.  It may even be good enough for me to drop my self serve ads and go directly through them.  I’ll certainly be watching for comparison to see how things shape up.

PerformancingAdsAlso, if you’re like me and are always looking for a great affiliate program, you’ll be hard pressed to beat the performancing ads affiliate program.  For each advertiser or publisher you refer, you get $10.  On top of that, you also get a 5% commission on all ad buys by any referred advertisers for life!  For Life!  You don’t have to be an einstein to know that could amount to a pretty large amount of money if you refer some good advertisers.

Give Performancing ads a look see.  I think that you’ll be glad you did.  And if you get in early enough, you might just get some good referrals as well!  Oh, and did I mention that they are giving a $25 off of a $100 ad purchase to new advertisers? What are you waiting for?

Filed Under: General News

PickensPlan

August 3, 2008 by

Have you seen this?  It’s a energy plan developed by T. Boone Pickens.  He’s a guy that’s been in the energy business for a very long time and knows what he’s talking about.  He’s also in the top 150 of the Forbes richest list.  And he’s financing a lot of the plan himself.  The basics of the plan consist of increasing wind power generation and beginning to use natural gas as an alternative to gasoline.  If implemented fully, he claims that the plan could replace 38% of the USA’s usage of oil.  According to his numbers that would save the country about 300B each year in imported oil.

As one might assume, Mr. Pickens does stand to gain if the plan is brought to fruition, but he’s also 80 and won’t enjoy it too long.  He owns a natural gas company and also is a major shareholder in a hedge fund group that has two hedge funds that invest heavily in energy.  None of that is any reason to really dislike the plan.  I’m all for something that helps reduce oil consumption.  I also live in that wind corridor that he’s talking about and think it would be a boon for just about all of our economies.

I’ve joined the as a supporter of the plan. Would you consider doing the same?

PickensPlan Commercial 2

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: ,
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