Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, anyone in online marketing knows about Twitter. However, even with the variety of tools and websites to enhance our Twitter experience, there is still some frustration lingering amongst users like me. As a new user how do you decide who to follow? Where can I find people in the industry with compelling content and a fresh, honest voice?

I have compiled a list of my top 10 Twitter-ers in the performance marketing space who I deem truthful, informative, engaging, and worth a follow:

1. http://twitter.com/leeodden 

Lee Odden is the CEO of TopRankBlog.com. He is a great source of all things social media. For any newbies just starting out in this space, his twitter is a great starting place for connecting and learning.

2. http://twitter.com/econsultancy 

Based out of London, Econsultancy compiles information surrounding the digital marketer’s world in one place. In order to be frequently updated to what goes on concerning online marketing, Econsutancy is a key to follow. They also have a live Twitter feed on their homepage as well as a growing community of contributors.

3. http://twitter.com/affbuzz

Recently launched, affbuzz.com gathers well-known industry contact’s blog RSS feeds into one website and all updates are automatically updated on their Twitter account. It’s a great resource to know what industry leaders are blogging about and how it affects you as a company.

4. http://twitter.com/sugarrae 

Connecting with Rae Hoffman on Twitter an achievement, as she doesn’t follow many, but she knows what is going on in the industry. CEO of her own Internet marketing agency and owner of MFE Interactive and Outspoken Media, she is an avid Twitter-er and speaks at many affiliate conventions.

5. http://twitter.com/stephagresta 

Stephanie Agresta is EVP, Global Director of Digital Strategy/Social Media at Porter Novelli, blogs at InternetGeekGirl.com and Co-founded TechSet. She has a huge readership base and engages her followers in conversation. Connecting with people is something she’s good at and you can definitely learn from her expertise.

6. http://twitter.com/affiliatetip 

If you’re in the performance industry, you know the name Shawn Collins. Co-founder of Affiliate Summit, FeedFront magazine editor and GeekCast.fm podcaster, Shawn is an icon in this space. Aside from adding a personal touch to his Twitter, Shawn is the most helpful resource to have. Ask him anything, and he’ll have the answer.

7. http://twitter.com/thedukeofseo 

If you want to know anything about SEO, this Twitter is a great resource from SEO land. What I like about this Twitter is it connects search and social media in the best and most literal form.

8. http://twitter.com/andybeal 

Andy Beal is the founder of Trackur.com, author of Radically Transparent, editor of MarketingPilgrim.com and a marketing consultant. He’s a great resource to have on Twitter because of his experience and his engagement. He’s honest, entertaining, and well respected in this industry.

9. http://twitter.com/murraynewlands 

Murray is a Green Online Marketing Specialist and a blogger. He uses Twitter to drive traffic to his compelling blog and posts educational links. A leader in the online space, Murray RT more than others and gives credit to those who deserve it.

10. http://twitter.com/quityourdayjob 

Jeremy Palmer is a well-known super affiliate and he teaches others how to follow in his footsteps. Owner of Quityourdayjob.com, Jeremy uses Twitter effectively because he adds more to the conversation. His Tweets are informative and current with what’s going on in the industry.

If you think I missed someone important in this list, like yourself, please feel free to leave a comment with their Twitter and why you think they should be added.

We’re just back from Denver where we attended the inaugural Affiliate Convention show. The success of the show was relatively unknown as it was the first time the producers put on the event, however, we were pleasantly surprised!

The show producers estimated they had about 1,200 attendees, the majority of which were affiliates as they were invited to attend for free. They were only anticipating 500 or so, so they well exceeded attendance expectations.

Of the 15 or so exhibitors, there was a mix of networks like ClickBooth, NeverBlue and Hydra alongside publishers and advertisers. A good mix of industry leaders appeared on panels over the two days. The panels seemed to be very well attended.

One of the show organizer’s, Webmaster Radio streamed MediaTrust’s CEO, Peter Bordes keynote “Conversations on Affiliate Performance Marketing.” Webmaster Radio streamed it live and you can listen to it HERE. The keynote was a a ’state of the industry’ conversation between MediaTrust, CEO, Peter Bordes, eBay’s Steve Hartman, Steve Schaffer, CEO of Vertive, and Wes Mahler of Prosper202. 

Jivan Manhas, MediaTrust’s Head of Sales also participated on a panel, “Lead Generation Strategies,” which was a how-to for affiliates interested in learning more about lead generation.

On a programming note, we captured both Peter and Jivan’s presentations in HD video. We’ll be posting them in the next few weeks right here on the blog.

The show producers are already planning the follow-up show, which is tentatively scheduled for December in Los Angeles and we’ll be anxiously awaiting details. Thanks to Aunesty Janssen of AffSpot, Jim Hedger of Webmaster Radio and Ticonderoga Ventures for the unfettered access that our crew got to cover the event. Their tech team earned their pay with all the landmines they had to navigate around the technology that we needed to properly do our jobs. We look forward to the next event!

In research posted after the ad:tech San Francisco show wrapped up, a couple nice meaty data points surfaced. The research polled attendees of the show about some of their planned behaviors. Two of them stand out for our readers:

• 89% of show attendees are interested in buying performance marketing
• 24% plan to buy performance marketing

Most of us knew that this trend to performance was alive and well, but these stats coming from a show of online advertisers of all sizes bear out the fact that online media will soon mean online performance media. Advertisers are looking for results and they are flocking to the performance model. Of course, all of us here at MediaTrust welcome this continued movement.  Its great to see the data point out that almost a quarter of the online media sector’s prime movers are planning on buying performance based media.

So the pressure on delivering results with smaller budgets has shifted the focus on our industry segment. Now the door of opportunity is open further for the industry to  deliver for our advertisers by making the process easier and safer for advertisers of all sizes.

So the next question is this: After learning to leverage pay-for-results advertising, do these same advertisers go back to spending a lot on impression-based media once we return to more robust budgets?

I tend to think not…once advertisers taste the sweet honey of paying for results, they’ll have a hard time going back to the old ways of backing into their effective CPAs using complex excel worksheets.

What do you think?

If you answered “no,” why not? 

First off, affiliates get to attend for free. So, grab a cheap plane ticket – or if you’re close enough, drive to the event – and get your friends together and pile into a hotel room. Then spend the next few days learning how to improve your business.

Second, look at the list of speakers! Keynotes from our very own CEO, Peter Bordes as well as Kris Jones from Pepperjam. Additionally there will be people from Ebay, Vertive, Clickbooth and Yahoo. Not enough you say? How about industry legends like Jeremy Schoemaker, Hamlet Batista, Heather Paulson and our own Jivan Manhas? There is definitely no shortage of talent at this event.

Third, you can’t forget the social aspects of a conference. These are usually the best opportunities to shake hands, have a drink and spend a little more time talking with potential partners. Affiliate Convention will have ample opprtunity for these types of interactions including a golf tournament, a pre-party hosted by the likes of Shoemoney and WickedFire, an “Affiliate Bash” hosted by Webmaster Radio and a closing day-two party.

Finally, we’ll be there covering the event for our blog and Relevantly Speaking. If you are a regular reader here, you know we’re always searching for interviews with the best and the brightest in the online marketing industry to share their wisdom. If you’d like to be a guest on Relevantly Speaking and you’ll be in Denver, please email me at sparentATmediatrustDOTcom.

UPDATE 6/11/09: Read our press release on Econsultancy.

Can you make $10k a day promoting CPA offers with SEO?

In my last post I received a lot of feedback about the value of SEO versus PPC. After seeing how heavily the “gurus” push PPC, I did not expect many people to agree with my point. But apparently, a large percentage see SEO as an excellent complement to PPC for driving traffic to affiliate offers. It is evident that those of us who are SEOs are less vocal than our PPC-only counterparts. Thanks for your feedback.

One of the comments that caught my attention was that of “nickycakes” where he implies that only with PPC can you make a substantial income, because he has only heard PPC super affiliates are earning over US $10k a day.

NickyCakes:

Sorry, but quick results is not the only reason why PPC is better. SEO can’t even come close to the scale that PPC can. It’s nearly impossible to scale SEO no matter how long you wait for your pathetic results. I’ve only ever heard of one person who made more than 10k a day on SEO and that was if you averaged out the sale of his giant financial affiliate site. I know dozens of people who make well over 10k a day with PPC who used to do SEO and gave up because it’s simply not even close to as profitable.

- Mar 24th, 2009

At first I was going to respond in his and other similar comments, but I felt that a proper response would require a separate blog post. So here it is.

First of all, I think I asked the wrong question in the title of this post. The right question should have been: “Can you make $100k a day promoting CPA offers with SEO?” What???? Yes, that is the right question. Let me tell you why.

Organic search listings can get as much as ten times the attention (and clicks) than paid listings.

According to Enquiro’s eye tracking study, organic search gets the lion’s share of the attention of searchers. Jim Boykin of WeBuildPages studied the data from AOL’s leaked search query logs and came to the conclusion that the #1 listing can get as much as 42% of the total clicks in the search engine result page. Compare this to best case scenario of 5% of clicks on the right hand side where the bulk of paid ads are displayed.

In theory, this means that if you can make $10k a day placing ads on the paid search network, you could potential make $100k by ranking for the exact same keywords in the organic results. Now, of course, this is much easier to say than to do, so I will give you a concrete example. But first …

As you probably noticed, I said “search network”. It is not surprising that few affiliates making a significant amount of money rely on ranking for the first few paid search ad spots given how expensive they are. Most successful affiliates spend their time more productively and cost-effectively fishing for inexpensive keywords in the content network or by seeking out the often overlooked, but highly converting keyword phrases.

Another thing to consider is the fact that many of the less successful affiliates like to boast about how much they make and tend to exaggerate because they are not able to prove their claims convincingly (for competitive reasons obviously ☺). The truth is that most successful Affiliates and merchants who are making obscene amounts of money don’t see the benefit they get from bragging about their results. The ones who are quiet about their results are usually the ones who are making the most money and don’t want to drive unnecessary attention and competition to their ventures. Just ask Matt Inman!

I’ve made $10k per day as an affiliate doing just SEO

Now, let’s move from theory to practice. Not to brag, but I can say with the confidence of personal experience that you can net more than $10k a day as an affiliate. I did just that a few years ago with a single web site, when I was ranking #1 for “phentermine” in Google and Yahoo. This has been confirmed by a respected third party. I prefer not to comment about how much I’ve made since then or how much I make now that I am both an affiliate and merchant. I can tell you, that when you scale your affiliate efforts and become a successful merchant, you multiply your profits. The development of my product, RankSense, cost me a few million dollars and all the funds came from my affiliate marketing ventures.

You can do this too!

There are several ways you can do this, however I will focus on explaining how I did it personally and how you can too, by following the methods I used and modeling it for your own efforts.

How was I able to make so much money from obscure keyword such as that? Why didn’t I try to rank for a keyword that had significant more searches like “weight loss”? Would I have been more successful if I had taken that approach? The short answer is a big “NO”.

Tip #1: Brand search keywords are the most profitable keywords—period!

When somebody is searching for a specific brand of product, they’re the closest you can get to buying such product. They already know their problem and think that the searched product is the solution to their problem. Most of the time, they are only looking for the cheapest price. You don’t need to do any selling. You simply need to convince them that you are getting them the best deal.

The worst conversion rate I got was 15% and could easily convert at 28-30% by simply displaying price comparison tables.

Now, combine those insights with a very hot niche like weight loss, a product with high demand such as Phentermine, crazy payouts with lifetime refill commissions and you have a golden opportunity. Unfortunately, the product is not longer available for sale on the Internet without a personal visit to the doctor. As I mentioned in my previous article, all opportunities have a small window where you can make the most money. Savvy affiliates study trends and try to seize opportunities as they appear.

Unfortunately, some merchants won’t let you bid on their brand terms in paid search, but there is not much they can do if you try to rank for their brand on the organic results. I’ve seen a few merchants who follow back all your links and request the web site owners to remove their brands from their page, but that is the exception. Most merchants are not that smart ☺

Tip #2: The most competitive markets are where most of the money is!

Many “gurus” recommend that you go to the obscure niches that few people care about because you will see results faster. Then in order to scale this, you need to find more obscure niches and do the same. You find dozens and hundreds of such niches and your profits will add up. This approach makes a lot of sense until you actually try to put it to practice. You will soon realize that each small niche is like starting all over again from scratch. The market research part of affiliate marketing is the most difficult part and it takes effort to get it right. Get it wrong and you will lose a lot of money.

What I prefer to do is to target a big profitable niche, a niche where there are a lot of people spending gobs of money to solve a perpetual problem like weight loss and then I divide the niche in sub-niches and work on the sub-niches, one at a time. I take this approach even when I have identified a single product I want to promote. I first go after the less competitive keywords, “cheap phentermine” instead of the more highly sought after keyword “phentermine”.

Tip #3: The brand hijacker technique!

Now, let’s say that you are trying to promote a really good offer like “PureCleanse Detox (#2117)”, with a awesome payout, great conversion rate and high demand niche, but the brand searches do not generate enough traffic. Here is what I do.

Have you ever seen the product pages in Amazon, where they recommend related books and some of those books get as many sales as the original item on the page? Why? Well using my technique you can do the same.

You can search for competing products on the same and similar categories that have more searches per month, then create affiliate pages for those products and add a section to your landing pages where you recommend the alternative or complimentary solution; which is in fact the one you ultimately want them to take. I recorded a Webinar last year where I explain this technique in more detail. You might want to check it out. You can access a recording of the live event here on my blog, HamletBatista.com

Conclusion

You can make a lot more money with SEO than you can from PPC, if you know what you are doing and you are targeting the most profitable opportunities. Do that and your profits will soar! Let me know what you think in the comments.

PS: If you want to learn more about my techniques, I will be sharing more super affiliate tips and specifically how I got to the first page of Google for “Viagra” and kept it there for couple of years, at the new must-attend Affiliate conference; Affiliate Convention, June 18 & 19 in Denver, Colorado. Put it on your calendar and make sure you do not miss it.

After a 25-hour travel day from Tel Aviv, I am back in the familiar settings of my office in Santa Barbara. Even though I was in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Israel two days ago, it now seems like a world away. I’ve been thinking a lot about Affilicon over the last 24 hours and wanted to share some thoughts.

First, this is the second Affilicon conference – the first was less than a year ago. You’d never know it. The event has a maturity and a polish to it that rivals some of the most well-produced events that I’ve ever attended. The facility was top-notch, the food was far and away better than anything I’ve ever had at a conference and the staff was courteous and professional. Combine all that with the fact that the  registration was one-third the cost of most other industry events.

Second, let’s talk about the content of the show itself. Like every conference you attend, there were some speakers and sessions that just weren’t that interesting. There’s no way to eliminate that completely. Unfortunately, in our industry I’m finding that trend more and more. Too often events get speakers with “names” that show up and give us all a bunch of vague jargon that doesn’t help anyone. Not so at Affilicon. The vast majority of the sessions I attended were built with practical applications in mind. Presenters used specific examples and answered really tough questions from the audience. If you were an affiliate attending this event – and the vast majority of attendees were – you left with a stack of good notes that will help elevate your business to the next level.

The only advice I would offer is to look at renting a car if you attend next year. The conference facility is located in Airport City which is about 30 minutes from downtown Tel Aviv where all the hotels are. A cab to and from the event runs about 135 Shekels, or $35 US. That can get pricey. My advice would be pool your money with some friends and rent a car.

The final thing I want to say is about the founder of Affilicon, Itay Paz. I met Itay at Affiliate Summit West in January. Since then you’ve seen him doing field reports for us all over the world on Relevantly Speaking. He’s one of those people that just radiates a warmth about him. Besides being very knowledgeable about the nuances of international affiliate marketing, Itay has a way of making everyone feel valued and important. You feel like you can trust him. I believe that is the single biggest reason for the success of Affilicon.

I want to extend my thanks to Itay, his wife Anat, Udi Netzer and the rest of the team at Affilicon for making it possible for me to attend. I hope to see you all at next year’s event.

Hello from Tel Aviv, Israel. Day one of Affilicon is over and my head is spinning from all the sessions, panels and interviews I was part of today.

This morning our own Jivan Manhas lead a panel about international affiliate programs – lots of great information about leveraging performance marketing on a global scale. Panelists included representatives from Copeac and ClickBank.

After an epic lunch spread (and I do mean epic by conference standards), I saw Igal Pines deliver a spirited presentation called “Cash Chicken Engineering.” In addition to becoming a very finacially successful affiliate, Igal also talked about karma and the importance of giving back to the affiliate community. In fact, he shares much of his knowledge with his readership of his PJS blog. Unfortunately for us English-speakers, his blog is in Hebrew.

During the late afternoon, I got a chance to interview Stefanie Amini from NeoGames Partners, Dush Ramachandran of ClickBank, Ran Aroussi - an internet marketing strategist and Igal Pines. All provided some great insight in the global, and particularly, the Israeli online markets.

On a final – and decidedly random note – Relevantly Speaking has proven to be pretty popular here. I’ve had quite a few people stop me to say they watched the show. It’s always nice to hear that people dig what we’re doing. It’s funny how small the world can be even when you’re halfway around the globe.

Tomorrow’s another big day. I better get some rest.

Canadian Anti-spam bill: C-27 Electronic Commerce Protection Act

I made a prediction in an earlier blog post that Canada would soon have its own anti-spam law. The reality of such a law is gaining momentum.. Bill C-27 “Electronic Commerce Protection Act” had its first reading in Parliament April 24th and its second reading on May 9th after which it was referred for review to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. No Committee date has been set yet.

The text of Bill C-27 is quite long (about 72 pages) and fairly complex, especially for legal laymen. While I think the overall direction of the bill is positive, there are parts of the bill that would benefit from improving the definitions of terms. Realistically speaking, it may take more time for clarification to come. In the case of the U.S.CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, the Federal Trade Commission only last year clarified a number of definitions and interpretations through “new rules”, including the definition of “person.”

There are too many details in the bill to analyze in this space. Those knowledgeable with the language of the CAN-SPAM Act (e.g. definitions of “sender”, “initiator”, and “routine conveyor”) will likely have some difficulty understanding the meaning of some terms and definitions in Bill C-27.

Here is a description of some of the main clauses of BillC-27 contrasted to the CAN-SPAM Act:

1 – Consent Required

“No person shall send or cause or permit to be sent to an electronic address a commercial electronic message unless (a) the person to whom the message is sent has consented to receiving it, whether the consent is expressed or implied; and…”

Affirmative consent should always be part of any email marketing program. Compared to the CAN-SPAM Act, Bill C-27 takes this view a step further by making it a legal requirement. As well, the burden of consent proof falls on the marketer.

The bill also has a section requiring that consent be obtained before installing a program on a recipient’s computer system:

“No person shall, in the course of a commercial activity, install or cause to be installed a computer program on any other person’s computer system or, having so installed or caused to be installed a computer program, cause an electronic message to be sent from that computer system, unless the person has obtained the express consent of the owner or an authorized user of a computer system or is acting in accordance with a court order.”

The above directly addresses a common spam tactic – in that software is surreptitiously installed on home computers and then controlled by the spammer to send out spam (referred to as “botnets”).

2 – Communications Scope

“Electronic message” means a message sent by any means of telecommunication, including a text, sound, voice or image message.”

The key point with the above is that the scope of the bill—unlike the CAN-SPAM Act– is not restricted to electronic communications sent to an SMTP mailbox (mailbox@domain.com) . Keep in mind that CAN-SPAM was enacted almost six years ago – an eternity in the pace of technological change.

3 – Broader Meaning of “Commercial Message”

“For the purposes of this Act, a commercial electronic message is an electronic message that, having regard to the content of the message, the hyperlinks in the message to content on a website or other database, or the contact information contained in the message, it would be reasonable to conclude it? has as its purpose, or one of its purposes, to encourage participation in a commercial activity, including …”

The key in understanding the above is “…or one of its purposes, to encourage participation in a commercial activity”. Compare this to CAN-SPAM where there is a distinction between commercial and transactional messages, where some of the legal requirements are relaxed for transactional messages (it should always be a best practice, though, to include an unsubscribe mechanism for transactional messages). While with CAN-SPAM certain organizations are exempt (e.g. religious, political) from the legal requirements, the case is different with bill C-27 where the nature of the message has to be closely scrutinized to determine the required legal compliance.

4 – Unsubscribe Mechanism and Sender’s Contact Information (Bill C-27)

“The message must be in a form that conforms to the prescribed requirements and must (a) set out prescribed information that identifies the person who sent the message and the person — if different —on whose behalf it is sent; (b) set out information enabling the person to whom the message is sent to readily contact one of the persons referred to in paragraph (a); and (c) set out an unsubscribe mechanism in accordance with subsection 11(1). (3) The person who sends the commercial electronic message and the person —if different— on whose behalf the commercial electronic message is sent shall ensure that the contact information referred to in paragraph (2)(b) is valid for a minimum of 60 days after the
message has been sent.”

Both Bill C-27 and the CAN-SPAM Act require that an unsubscribe mechanism be made available to the subscriber and that the sender’s contact information be included in the message. The important difference, however, is that with CAN-SPAM the unsubscribe mechanism must work for 30 days after the message was sent; while with C-27 this time frame has been increased to 60 days. Both C-27 and CAN-SPAM call on senders to honor opt-out requests within 10 days (a best practice, of course, is to honor opt-out requests immediately or before your next mailing goes out).

5 – Private Right of Action

The CAN-SPAM Act restricts civil action to the Federal Trade Commission and Internet Service Providers. Bill C-27, by contrast, extends this to individuals and allows for private right of action where individuals are permitted to sue senders who allegedly have violated the law.

*******
On a related permission-based email marketing subject, you are welcome to attend a free Cypra Media-sponsored webinar Tuesday, June 2nd , at 2 p.m. EDT titled, “E-Mail Deliverability: How to Get It Done”. Click to find out more information and to sign-up.

I was reading this great article over at Ad Age. It’s about how several small businesses are using Twitter in a proven way to drive sales. For example, Naked Pizza in New Orleans ran a Twitter promotion on April 23rd that accounted for 15% of that day’s business.

“Every phone call was tracked, every order was measured by where it came from, and it told us very quickly that Twitter is useful,” said Jeff Leach, the restaurant’s co-founder. “Sure, there’s the brand marketing and getting-to-know-you stuff. … But we wanted to know: Can it make the cash register ring?”

The article goes on to point some very specific tips that businesses should be mindful of when using Twitter as a promotional tool:

TRACK EVERY SALE - Consider sending out a codeword in a tweet that customers have to repeat to get a discount. This will give you an absolutely granular look at the real impact the promotion has.

TWITTER IS NOT FACEBOOK - Twitter is more immediate – it is more likely to harness action in a more urgent and spontaneous way whereas Facebook might be better to plan a longterm contest or promotion using groups or an application.

CREATE A CONVERSATION – Don’t blast promotions incessantly. Intersperse them with other nuggets of wisdom or news related to your products and industry or neighborhood. Or, if you have a broader social mission, use Twitter to communicate that. Naked Pizza co-founder Jeff Leach suggests that if these kinds of social technologies become game changers, there may be a day when companies’ initial business plans take into consideration whether they have anything worth microblogging.

SELL LAST-MINUTE INVENTORY - Twitter’s immediacy is its biggest strength — so use it to pump up business during lulls or discount last-minute unsold goods, said Zack Steven, co-founder of LocalTweeps, a local Twitter directory, who caught same-day discounted tickets at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis via Twitter.

ALERT FOLLOWERS WHEN YOU’RE ON THE GO - Venture capitalist Fred Wilson likes to point to KogiBBQ, a Korean taco truck that drives around Los Angeles, alerting its almost 20,000 followers to its current and future locations via a Twitter feed.

Looking at the above points, how can Twitter help you achieve your performance marketing goals? For us, we’ve used it to search for SEM firms, fill staff positions, recruit publishers and advertisers and get the word out about important issues in our industry like the affiliate tax. Then, monthly, we gather reports and see where we had an impact and where we can do better.

How is your company or business using Twitter to increase your bottom line?

The PMA Performance Marketing Alliance Association announced that the anti-affiliate legislation in Minnesota DID NOT PASS! This win is directly tried to the members of the PMA organization and the industry community working together to combat the tax legislation.This is the second win that demonstrates how effective we can be in having networks, merchants and affiliates working together to make a difference. Minnesota affiliates your efforts are greatly appreciated. The tax is dead for now. There are more of the political details on the PMA site. Here is the latest communication  about the omnibus tax bill that was passed by the Legislature.

_______________________
Minnesota –Multiple Taxes: Omnibus Public Finance Bill Passes Legislature

An omnibus public finance bill that would make numerous changes to corporate
income, personal income, sales and use, property, and other taxes has been
passed by the Minnesota Senate, and has been repassed by the House of
Representatives as amended by the Senate, on May 12, 2009. The provisions
were amended to H.F. 1298 by the conference committee for H.F. 2323, which
as previously reported, passed the House of Representative on April 25,
2009, and the Senate on April 28, 2009. (TAXDAY, 2009/04/28, S.12)

Sales and Use Taxes
The bill does not contain the provision, previously passed by the House and
the Senate (TAXDAY, 2009/04/28, S.12), that would have created a rebuttable
presumption, similar to New York’s so-called Amazon law, that a retailer is
presumed to have a solicitor in Minnesota if the retailer enters into an
agreement with a resident under which the resident, for a commission or
other consideration, directly or indirectly refers potential customers to
the retailer by a link on an Internet Web site or by other means.
H.F. 1298, as passed by the Legislature on May 12, 2009.
______________________