Amazon terminates all affiliates from California due to new bill

[Shades]

read about this today over at smart passive income. Link to the article here....

Alternatives for Amazon Affiliates – Life After the Tax Bill | The Smart Passive Income Blog

Basically a new Sales tax bill was passed in CA. Due to that Amazon is no longer dealing with affiliates from CA. More then 25,000 people have an income source completely shut off overnight.

If thats not a example of why you need Control I dont know what is.

 

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[dnice]

That sucks. Like MJ said, don't join an affiliate program, create an affiliate program. Control is everything. Unfortuately, most online businesses are depending on these programs. Someday Google will change its program and a whole lot of people will be screwed and without an income overnight. I think Google is already headed that way. It's only a matter of time before they change their afiliate program.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

More then 25,000 people have an income source completely shut off overnight.

It probably should read: "More than 25,000 people learn what happens when you violate the Commandment of Control" -- and yet, many of them still don't see the light and seek to "replace" their income with some other alternative. Affiliate programs are nice income avenues (I use them), but my God, I can't imagine relying on them as a primary income source to support myself of my family ... almost as risky as a job. Diversification can help mitigate risk but still, I'd rather be the one offering the affiliate program rather than the one joining them.

 

[Jonleehacker]

I rely on Amazon for a decent portion of my income. I find the reaction to the article a bit dramatic.

As the article mentions, if Amazon bumped me, the things I still have control over are:

- I can point my links to any of many other merchants that would be happy to give me similar terms to amazon.

- I can register a company address in another jurisdiction that Amazon accepts.

Not wanting to pretend that being an affiliate is the ultimate fastlane business model, but I think it is too easy to discount. Every business model has strengths and weaknesses. To me the real fastlane business is one that has strengths and weaknesses aligned to you.

For me, having my own products, and needing to answer phone or email support requests would be 100x more frightening than the idea of getting bumped by Amazon. That would seriously affect my golf game.

 

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