by dangerbrown on July 16, 2011
Spelling errors might be costing you half of your sales.
I’ve been a closet spelling/grammar/punctuation nazi for years. When I read a blog post or sales page with what I consider significant errors, my mind is completely sidetracked. I stop thinking about your message, and start thinking about what needs to be fixed. If you have grave errors on your page, I think you are stupid and sloppy and won’t consider buying anything from you.
I know lots of affiliates with poor skills are successful, but you’d be more successful if you eliminated these mistakes.
I’m not the only one. This article from the BBC inspired me to finally say what I think. The article alleges that in one case, they saw sales double after correcting an error on a sales page. Of course, one split test is inadequate, but I’m confident that there is truth to it.
What are you going to do about it? If you want to improve yourself and your sales, follow my affiliate link here and educate yourself.
Amazon book: Grammatically Correct: The Essential Guide to Spelling, Style, Usage, Grammar, and Punctuation
P.S. I don’t claim to be perfect. I overuse commas and I know I sometimes make other writing mistakes.
by dangerbrown on June 30, 2011
It was inevitable that CA would pass this tax meant to increase tax revenue. As misguided as it is, you can’t expect a bunch of doddery old politicians to understand the economics of the internet.
Fuck California for taxing even more money from it’s people!
Fuck Amazon for dropping 1000′s of affiliates while still accepting traffic and sales from their sites. I think it’s often overlooked that there are countless online businesses which people have spent years building. These websites may have large volumes of visitors flowing through them to Amazon.com. Amazon is still accepting all the sales generated by affiliates but isn’t paying those affiliates for their hard work. It’s outright theft! I’m angrier at Amazon than California.
Enough ranting. Time to move on. Here in Colorado we faced the same thing many months ago. I remember reading news stories of Colorado based affiliates moving out of state to save their businesses. I didn’t move, but I still control an active Amazon affiliate account and they pay me from time to time. Here’s how:
1. Establish an out of state LLC or similar entity.
2. Use their registered agent service to forward your mail.
3. Open a bank account in the company’s name. It can still be a CA bank account.
That’s about it….and it’s a legit workaround. The LLC is a legal entity similar to a person for the purpose of opening an Amazon account. The LLC is the affiliate. You are merely an employee of said company. Amazon pays the company, then the company pays you. Because the LLC isn’t in CA, you shouldn’t have any troubles.
Now, where do you go from here? Well, out of state LLC’s have been very popular in Delaware, Nevada, and Wyoming. I’ve done some research on it and like Wyoming the best. Delaware is best for companies with stockholders. Nevada is OK but has occasionally thought about weakening some of it’s strong points. Wyoming has no state income tax and has never had legislation which threatened all the strong points of Wyoming LLCs.
I personally really like the “Wyoming Close LLC” entity and have 2 of them myself. The “Close LLC” is meant for family owned businesses and is well structured for estate planning. If you have lots of money, or plan on having lots of money, it might be a useful entity.
Remember that you need a registered agent service to forward your 1st class mail. They’ll forward your 1099′s and so forth. My personal experience is that the mail forwarding is marginal, so I won’t be recommending either of the 2 registered agents I currently use. But it still gets the job done.
Also, my experience of opening them was that it took FOREVER (7 weeks) with one of them. The other took about 2 weeks. If you have a serious Amazon business, you may want to pay to expedite service and would be well advised to compare complaints that different agents have received. Check the Better Business Bureau.
I also shopped for the cheapest services over the long term and may be getting what I paid for. That being said, you can switch registered agents if you have trouble with one of them.
Here is an affiliate link to a pretty big outfit. I’ll get a few bucks if you choose these guys. But I haven’t tried them out myself. www.incorporate.com
P.S. It doesn’t have to be Wyoming. Maybe you have trusted friends or relatives out of state somewhere. You can set up an LLC in any state that Amazon still accepts. Several states have no state income tax. Costs vary state to state.
Did I leave something out? Got a question? Please comment and tell us what you think about the Ca affiliate tax.
