Why Living in California Sucks (Occasionally)

The nexus law reared its ugly head again in September. As far as Amazon is concerned, we started paying sales tax on our Amazon earnings, which in my opinion is no big deal because I think we should have done that years ago.

But I was dropped by a number of merchants on shareasale.com, and that was a big inconvenience.

It started with Wayfair who sent me an email with the title Wayfair Affiliate Program DECLINED. I was very puzzled by this as I had been a Wayfair affiliate for over a year and I hadn't only just applied to be one. I thought I had broken a rule that I didn't know about (not uncommon in this business).

Here's the content of the email:

Thanks you for your interest in the Wayfair Affiliate Program. Upon review of your site we were not sure how our products would fit with your marketing approach. However, since we realize that many affiliates have a number of sites and marketing talents, we would like to offer you the chance to email us directly at affiliates@wayfair.com to give us more information, at which point we will review your site(s) once again.

Thank you again for your interest in our program. We hope to hear from you with a more detailed plan about a potential partnership
Best Wishes, 

Then came another email from one of my Shareasale merchants:

New Agreement Effective Date: September 22, 2012
Merchant provided summary of changes:
Update to the Prohibition against solicitation activities by resident affiliates in the states of California, New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island.

and another:

Thank you for applying to the DiscountWatchStore.com Affiliate Program. We apologize, however, we are only accepting partners whose sites are suitably targeted to users who fit our marketing profile.
After carefully reviewing your site, we do not feel your site meets these criteria.
If you feel that the rejection cause is not applicable, or if you would like to appeal for any other reason, please contact us so we can reconsider your application. 

And then yet another merchant stopped being on my list of affiliates, without me receiving an email.

The net result is that I've spent the last two weeks checking all my websites and blogs, changing adverts, which is not my favorite thing to do. My plan always was to spend the month of October checking my links are live for the Christmas season, but I'd always prefer to choose what I do than be forced into doing something.

Ah, well, I suppose that's the Internet marketing life. And if I don't like it I could always get a real job!