I can tell you from personal experience, switching over to new vendors would require re-doing the months worth of work I’ve already done. I would get ZERO future income from hundreds or even thousands of hours worth of work I’ve already done, and switching everything over would prevent me from doing hundreds of hours worth of work that I could do as I end up having to spend that time re-doing work I’ve already done. Anyone who thinks you can just flick a switch and change everything over doesn’t understand how affiliate marketing works.

As for Barnes & Nobles offer to pick up some of the dumped affiliates, note the word “some”. The beauty of Amazon’s affiliate program is that anyone, anyone, with a website, no matter what their traffic, no matter if they have no prior affiliate experience, no matter how small their website, can join the Amazon Associates Program and start in affiliate marketing. You don’t have to have a fully completed website, you don’t have to have a minimum traffic level, you aren’t scrutinized by some affiliate manager, you can just join and start working. It doesn’t matter how small you are, how poorly you perform in the beginning, you can still join, participate, and work towards bigger and more profitable times. That’s a large part of WHY amazon became as big as they did, their open door policy towards all affiliate marketers.

Not so with Barnes & Noble. I’m sure they’ll be glad to scoop up the top performers, well, the ones who don’t relocate out of state, that is, but they won’t be interested in the small fry. I applied to their affiliate program and was rejected, and I’m sure I’d be rejected today too. They’re far less attractive than Amazon in any event, Amazon has a better site, better prices, better range of products (its not just books, folks) and I’m sure better conversion rates. There’s a reason why Amazon is the biggest online retailer.

If these bills pass in California, I’ll essentially be killed as an affiliate marketer, unless I can get an out of state friend let me come and live on their couch. California still won’t get any sales tax from Amazon, Overstock, etc., the rich affiliates will take their jobs and their income out of the state, and I’ll either be forced into going onto welfare and begging my way out of the state so I don’t lose thousands of hours invested into my affiliate sites. That’s the reality.

Amazon and other affiliate ad networks will simply stop allowing affiliate ads on California-based content websites, killing many in-state businesses. The sales will still be made through Amazon, only no ad revenue will be paid to California webmasters. The state will lose that income tax revenue, while the websites will likely go out of business.

As a website owner, I know the ins and outs of the business. Faced with the loss of all my advertisers, my sites would be forced to move out of state or close. Almost every other California based professional web publisher will face this same problem. How will this possibly end up in a net gain of any sort for the state treasury? It won’t.

This is a law conceived by incompetent and/or corrupt legislators who make no attempt to grasp the intricacies of how web advertising works. Just the fact that Barnes and Noble is mentioned as a “replacement” for Amazon ads shows just how little these legislators understand the web publishing industry. Only a very small percentage of Amazon affiliate ads promote BOOKS these days. Instead, these ads promote every other product under the sun. As a result, Barnes and Noble would be unable to pick up 99% of the ad revenue that would be lost if Amazon and other affiliate ad networks (like Shareasale and Commission Junction) were to dump California websites, as they have promised to do in the event this bill passes.

Sure there needs to be sales tax equity, but his is an issue that needs to be addressed at the Federal level. Walmart is the main force lobbying for this bill in CA and other states. They could care less about the havoc such poorly conceived legislation will wreck – their sole intent is to wage war on Amazon.

1. The California tax would not affect sales by Amazon itself; that’s affected only by federal law. Only the “affiliates” would pay the tax — the Mom and Pop outfits. And if the tax is imposed, Amazon says it will just end the affiliates. So no tax would come from Amazon’s affiliates, either.

2. You missed my point that California benefits from making use of the Internet as easy as possible: more Internet, more profits to California companies. Hampering the Internet ourselves with a complicated state sales tax on Amazon, etc., would reduce Internet use, and encourage other states and countries to do similar things. Thus hurting California Internet companies. Hurting California companies would reduce their taxable business, and so reduce the income, cap gains and other taxes they pay.

3. Trying to grab $124 million from affiliates — and you wouldn’t get that, because many would go out of business — hardly would help solve a $25 billion budget deficit.

4. Thank you for the update on the bill number.

And steveo, no amount of money will make our government “fiscally sounds and able to provide needed public services” in the long term because every time they get any additional revenue, they just blow it on pork & fraudulent programs. Without all of the waste, corruption, & redundancy removed from our government, they will just tax & spend into insolvency. For now, they will just keep hiring media relations scumbags like Snake Oil steve maviglio in an attempt to fool the public into paying more taxes & portray successful people as villians who should be treated as ATMs for public union.