The NC Tax Laws, FCC Regulations, and Google Adwords

So what do these three all have in common?   Well if you are me, these are three things that have caused obstacles in my affiliate marketing career as of late.

Affiliate marketing is hard enough.  It takes patience, hard work, and a little bit of crazy to be successful.  But then throw in some roadblocks like a new tax law in NC and it can be a real curve ball in your business.  But I am writing this to be optimistic.  To show all of the others who are in the same boat as I am in, to continue to work hard and be creative and diversified with your income opportunities.

1.  NC Tax Laws that Affiliate Marketing Efforts.

The good ole law makers in NC, did not even know what they were doing when they signed into law a new tax known as the nexus law or the Amazon tax.  It was called the Amazon tax because every single Amazon affiliate in North Carolina was fired because of the noose it would tie around Amazon’s neck.  Ok, sure they could have afforded it.  But the tax was very unconstitutional.  Basically NC wanted them to charge a tax to people living in NC even though Amazon is not based in NC.  By having affiliates in NC, the law says that they had a physical presence here.  Now besides that fact that that is completely absurd, we as affiliates do not constitute a physical presence nor were we employed by Amazon. We were merely advertisers, but NC is broke and greedy so they were delusional enough to believe this was a good idea.  Now they are getting ZERO from Amazon and losing a lot of affiliate’s income to other states, putting NC further in debt.  Nice move.

2.  FCC Regulations on Affiliate Marketing

This one is not as much an obstacle as it is just a pain in the neck.  The FCC decided that every time we link to an affiliates website we need to specify  that it IS in fact an affiliate link.  And nothing will encourage a visitor to click a link like “Hey, we make money when you buy this and our statements are probably all lies just because we want to make money off you”.

They have not specified exactly HOW they want us to reveal we are being compensated, as long as we do I suppose.  It just means there are thousands of web pages to go through from the past 2-3 years to make all of these changes and make even less money while we are at it.  It seems the government is dead set on killing affiliate marketing, and this is why it’s more important than ever to get involved with local and federal governments and link up with others who want freedom to run our businesses.

3.  Google Adwords Hates Affiliate Marketing Too

So I just got the email from Google Adwords that they have stopped all of my campaigns because the landing pages had poor quality.  I checked them and not only were they filled with unique and relevant content, but it was offering a lot of great free information to the general public as well.  But apparently they do not like it when your landing page links to another site or encourages visitors to click to another site.  Even though this is more money for them, they are cracking down on affiliates, making it near impossible to rely on Adwords as a great source of traffic any more.  Looks like it’s time for us all to turn to Bing.  If Google weren’t such a great search engine I would boycott the thing.  But I do find myself using Bing more and more, if nothing else.. just out of spite.

So what do you all think?  Have you had to face one of these 3 obstacles in your affiliate marketing as well?  Let us know with a comment below.