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Read the headlines “Affiliate Marketers Crippled By Taxes”.

More hype in the internet marketing arena or a warning of what is lurking just around the corner?

Cash poor authorities will of course be looking to increase revenues as much as possible and it seems that affiliate marketers – both those running affiliate programs and the affiliates themselves are being targeted by several US States.

I ran across this artcle “Beware the affiliate nexus tax” at Quansite and think you should read it and take note if you are involved in affiliate marketing in any way.

Seemingly the idea behind the tax is to remove the need to be physically present in a particular state before you are taxed. So, wherever you run your business from you could be taxed if you sell to people in the state affect by the tax. That’s regardless of whether you just put up a link and have no idea of who has bought through the link.

Can you see the difficulties here?

Potentially there will be businesses running affiliate programs who simply decide they don’t want to take the risk and simply close down their affiliate programs. Where would that leave you if you whole business is built around promoting affiliate products?

I strongly recommend you do your own research into this if you think you’ll be affected. I’m not in the US so whether I will be impacted I don’t know. But I’m sure not just going to sit back and wait and see!

I didn’t start this blog to do this but sometimes things get me so mad and mobile phone marketing has done just that and I need to get this off my chest.

Well to be fair it’s not exactly mobile phone marketing itself but the actions of some marketers who frankly I think should know better.

The latest bandwagon has just rolled into town and we are all expected to ride out on the wave of euphoria that is marketing using people’s mobile phones.

Get the headlines:

5 billion people use mobile phones

There’s a 97% open rate

Sounds good until you really think about it: -

How targeted is the message?

Why are people opening the messages?

Answer 1 - it cannot possibly be targeted

Answer 2 – because people think messages on their phones are from people they want to hear from!

And there’s the bigger problem and what I would call this method of marketing:

How to piss off 97% (no, make that 96.9% since there’ll always be some people brain dead enough not to mind such a blatant intrusion into their life) of mobile phone users.

SIDENOTE – sorry about the language but I really am mad at this!

"Doing anything special? No you sell away"

So who will make out of this?

The guys telling you how to make money from mobile phone marketing that’s who!

Let me state this loud and clear here and now: -

If anyone, and I mean anyone, ever sends me a marketing message on my mobile phone I’ll throw every possible resource at you to get you closed down. That means Data Protection issues, that means spam rules, that means cold calling rules, that means some obscure rule laid down by some government department. I’ll find something and there WILL be something to find rest assured. It’s bad enough getting cold calls on the landline. Don’t start on my mobile as well!

Let me say it very loud –

I do not want to receive marketing messages on my mobile when I’m:

With my kids;

When I’m at a football match;

When I’m driving my car;

Wwhen I’m at a restaurant;

In the middle of the night (I live in a different part of the world to some people!);

When I’m working;

When I’m not;

At anytime, night or day, Spring Summer, Autumn or Winter

In fact I don’t ever want to hear from you

Now I’m actually a student of marketing. I love the innovation and the tactics and I’m happy to receive emails pitching me for products when I’ve agreed to receive them. I’m even happy with the emails I get on my mobile but don’t start texting and / or calling me. Perhaps you guys should go back to door to door selling?

A mobile phone is for keeping in contact with people you want to keep in contact with. End of story.

So not only has the whole idea of mobile phone marketing – the so called Gold Rush, seriously hacked me off it has also caused me to unsubscribe from several email lists already today alone. How many more will get the chop by the end of the week?

Come on guys, have your say, am I right or wrong on this?

By the way, ever had the mobile in your pocket or bag when taking a visit to the bathroom? Be great to get a sales pitch then wouldn’t it!

Many of our members have asked for recommended plugins to add slide shows of multiple photos / images to their blogs.

I’ve tried most of the plugins at some time and have found most to need either a lot of care, a lot of technical knowledge or a lot of patience. In most cases all three!

Recently I decided to do some more research and came up with a solution that I think is fantastic. No only do you not need a plugin, you can expect more traffic and the results are just superb. You end up with your Flickr photos showing up on a really cool 3D Photo Wall provided free by Cooliris

Watch this video to see exactly what I mean.

You’ll need to sign up for Flickr and use Cooliris (if you haven’t downloaded the Cooliris plugin for Firefox yet you are really missing out)

I’d love to see what you’ve done with this so leave me a message on the Contact page.

Following on from my post about the Easy Video Player – Video Marketing Made Easy – here’s a great video I think you’ll like.

By the way the site is now live and the one-off payment option is still available.

Talk is it will go to a monthly fee very soon – watch this video now – it may be too late later!

Easy Video Player Video

And here’s a video I created for another site – watch what happens at the end – now that’s cool!

I’m a great fan of video marketing – and with WordPress plugins it’s really easy to install on your site. But…

…if you’ve ever tried to upload all of the files you need to a normal site you’ll know how complicated it can be.

Even with WordPress there’s a danger of the videos crashing if there are too many views at once and unless you are really good technically it’s virtually impossible to add Opt-In boxes and automtatic re-directs (to say affiliate sales pages) when the video ends – certainly without spending masses of time.

That’s all about to change.

The marketing activities of so many people using video (or wthose who would like to but have avoided it to date) have just become really simple…

This software is really cool.

You can add Aweber Opt-In boxes that display automatically when the video finishes.

You can add automatic redirects so that when the video ends the visitor is redirected to ANY site that you choose. That could be your own sales page, an affiliate product, a blog, you are limited only by your imagination.

As you know I don’t do hype but I’m told the program will be available for a one-off price (you can use it on as many sites as you like for life) initially only. After a certain number have been sold there will be a monthly fee. Whether that’s sales hype or not I don’t know but personally I prefer a one-off so I won’t take the chance!

The product launches on Tuesday 12th January but in the meantime there are some great explanatory videos and some sales techniques at the site that are well worth watching.

If you use video marketing (or plan to) this is well worth looking at: