Amazon Affiliates program being terminated in California starting Friday

I am in the process of setting up an LLC in Nevada which will control my Amazon affiliate business. Now Nevada will make a little extra money and California will olse a little money they made from me...

 

as more and more states consider implementing this law do you think Nevada will never do it too?

 

All California residents can write to Governor Brown and ask him to remedy this situation. Spend 2 minutes and send your message to the Government.

 

Hi there,

Please let me know if you would like to join this effort.

Because of the law change, I am relocating from CA to NV (I already have a house in NV, I just need to rent out the CA house to establish the proper intent). I spent the past week in Nevada working with a corporate governance attorney and CPA.

I am working with a few other affiliaties from the Bay Area (friends of mine). We are setting up a Nevada entity (most likely and LLC) which will have the ability to 'house' California affiliates without the affiliate having to move.

I can explain more, PM me for details. Questions I have received are below:

What will this cost?
- for smaller affiliaties, the cost will be $500 per year
- for larger affiliates, the cost will be between $2k and $10k per year

What will change? Will I still own my work?
- You will still own your blog and receive all the affiliate revenue you currently receive.
- What will change is that your checks will come from the Nevada entity

How will I know I am receiving the correct amounts?
- Nothing will change about how you track your affiliate income, so you will see exactly how much you are making

What does it take to be approved by the network?
- We are not accepting all affiliates - we want this to be large enough to benefit everyone, but not so large that it's unwieldy to manage. We have 6 affiliates lined up, ideally we'll find another 5 large affiliates and 10-20 small.
- You must be willing to consent to a background check. We want to know who we are dealing with. In turn, you will receive the same from us.
- You must be willing to meet in person. Doing business face to face is important for a variety of reasons. We want to know our network, we want to build trust. That doesn't happen over email.
- We reserve the right to deny any affiliate site for any reason (in particular, we are not interested in sexual or offensive affiliate sites)

How will I know this will work?
- The structure will be backed by an opinion of a law firm, which law firm would be liable if it did not work
- Separately, the entity will provide you the legal protections of an LLC

What are the benefits?
- Keeping your Affiliate site as is
- Keeping your residence in California
- We may offer a health care plan - one benefit is that this entity will quality for group insurance, which is much cheaper than individually acquired insurance. (We are looking into this on behalf of a large affiliate, and cannot promise this will be available for a couple of months.)

My background: attorney, finance, former Googler, blogger. More information, including a personal background check, will be disclosed upon request.

 

Yep, got mine. I wasn't a big fan of Amazon, didn't really like their affiliate program, but many affiliates will lose a major part of their income. I think it's just a good example of how you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket.

 

OMG .. what a crappy law!

 

If you have a house/relative in another country/state, you can use their info

 

It's horrible - even if they do reverse the decision in the future, everyone's websites will be worthless by then.

 

Amazon has re-instated me!

I'm already using EarthClassMail.com for my mail, and I easily just added a NV PO Box. So I updated my info on Amazon, and sent them an email about it. They re-instated me, but mentioned that eventually I may have to submit documents proving that I am a Nevada resident. (I'm in the process of moving there officially, btw).

I used Nevada.org to set up a corporation in NV. Super easy and only cost me $650 to set it up and $250 per year after that. That includes all the filing fees and everything. They will give me a Nevada EIN (Employer Identification Number) and I'll start doing business with Amazon and BodyBuilding.com using that corporation. This will allow me to do business with them legitimately.

You can still do this if you don't move to NV, however you sill still have to pay CA income tax on all earnings. This just allows you to be an affiliate of Amazon because in their eyes, you are a NV corp, not a CA corp. Doesn't matter to them who is working for the corp, or where that person is located.

Nevada is so pro-business that I doubt they would pass something this stupid. I read somewhere that they brought it up, but it was shot down before even becoming a bill. So many businesses are moving to Nevada, it would be silly to send them all away with this stupid law.

Done. I doubt he reads each one personally, but I was sure to mention that he officially lost me as an income tax payer in CA.

PM sent.

 

What's wrong with these giants? Google, Microsoft, Amazon.....they act as if they are the Government of the Internet!

 

Do you think this is something that will start effecting other country's such as the UK?

 

Yeah this is definitely a bummer. I know some people who were making up to $10,000 per month with Amazon that were affected. It's definitely a no win situation, but didn't catch too many people by surprise. They've been trying to pass this tax law in California for years now. Last year they said they would keep trying to pass this bill until it finally gets voted in.

 

This probably isn't legal. The language of the law is pretty clear - you're a resident of California, so you can't just claim to be working from NV. Read more amazontaxfix dot com.

 

I hope this doesn't spread to other states or around the world. I think alot of people offline don't understand online marketing and how it can benefit the local and worldwide economy

 

It will spread to the states that are controlled by the party that doesn't understand Aesop's Fable - The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg. I understand that Rhode Island has collected $0 online sales tax since passing their Amazon tax. California will find out that ripping that goose open will not yield one egg but California will be cutting unemployment checks that will be used to pay for moving services to Nevada. I hear we the people of California may have a vote on the Amazon tax in an upcoming election.

 

There are other affiliate programs worth investigating; Amazon has a long tradition for treating their affiliates poorly.

 

What a shame! I feel bad for the affiliates who put their time and effort into the promoting the program.

 

Amazon terminated, who next ????

 

Over 10,000 affiliates are believed to have lost their accounts. This may be because of the fact that the sales tax factor is getting affected there.

 

You guys do know that Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de and the one in china will still take affiliates who live in California or any other banned state right?

The ban is only for Amazon.com, I've checked this with the site.