Before New York governor Elliot Spitzer’s hooker scandal, he signed a proposed provision to the New York State sales tax law that requires out-of-state online retailers with in-state affiliates to collect and remit sales tax on purchases by New York buyers (source: Internet Retailer).  Amazon seems to be the main target of the provisions and has filed a lawsuit challenging such.  

Unfortunately many online merchants are now dropping affiliates based in New York to avoid collecting the sales tax.  Now this doesn’t directly affect me as I live in Nebraska as you can see by the soybean field in my backyard (but may someday if other states follow suit), but I have colleagues that live in New York have been dropped, leaving them the choice of incorporating their business in another state or finding new programs to promote, thus changing all of their links/site.

For more information, visit NYAffiliates.com on ABestWeb for the latest news on the NY state tax law.

Thanks to Greg Rice, Sr of Commerce Management Consulting / gocmc.com for sending me this “Support New York Affiliate” t-shirt.  CMC is an independent affiliate program management company with programs on ShareASale and CJ and will be distributing Support NY Affiliates buttons at Affiliate Summit in Boston.

Want me to profile a tshirt for you in this space?  Send a size Large to: Kim Rowley, Key Internet Marketing, Inc. PO Box 12. Pierce NE 68767

HELLO!  I got this funky shirt from Brian Hawkins over at Pingo.com that says “Hello” in seven different languages.  And I added the hand wave as my way as saying hello as well. 

So I made it a mission to translate the greetings…
Hello! (English, duh)
Bonjour! (French)
Ciao! (Italian)
Hola! (Spanish)
Moshi Moshi (Japenese)
Alô (Portuguese)
Алло (Russian)
 (Chinese, pronounced Nee HaOW)
I couldn’t figure out the bright green one – can anyone help me??
Update: Thanks to Evaa for translating…
“the last one in green says “Nameste” (that’s hello in HINDI from Hindustan (India)”

And as the front of the shirt says “In any language… Pingo …the last calling care you’ll ever need!”

Pingo.com is currently offering $5 in free calling when visitors sign up for a pre-paid calling card. They also have an affiliate program at Linkshare. Brian also sent me a couple of calling cards to test out the service and a coupon entitling me to take a day off!  Thanks Brian! 

P.S.  Unlike Scott Jangro, I’m not afraid to wear this tshirt in public.

P.S.S. Wanna me to wear your shirt in exchange for some free link love?  Send to: Kim Rowley, Key Internet Marketing, Inc. PO Box 12. Pierce NE 68767

Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Congrats to Janie McQueen, winner of our Giving Away the Goods Contest who won a brand new copy of Rosalind Gardner’s The Super Affiliate Handbook!  I have a few more of Ros’s books to give away, so look for another giveaway in the future.

I finally gave in to the Twitter trend and started “twitting”.  You can follow me here.
I’ve been auto-updating it via TwitterFeed and FB2Twit (uses my Facebook status).
Wonder who owns Twatter.com?  I would jump on monetizing that if I did.  ‘Nuf said.

Anyway, back to biz, I’ve been compiling a list of related blogs written by my colleagues for added resources.  It’ll remain a work in progress as I add more links, and you can check it out here.

I also finally decided to play with Movie Maker (free download from Microsoft) after I made a video for my Mailbox Monday feature.  Obviously youtube won’t let you upload more than 10 minutes worth of clips, and I rambled on for more than 12 minutes, so I figured out how to cut out a few frames (ie useless jokes).  Movie Maker also lets you add screens and words, too cool. And just today, I see youtube now lets you “add video annotations”.  Now I need to play with that to see if I can add words to previously uploaded videos. 

But for now, tune into my youtube channel this week as I actually let the world see me with no makeup on (can’t wear it for a week after my lasik enhancement surgery, argh!).