Technitard

Trapped in the Machine

Home Archives for 2011

Archives for 2011

Never Mind! Amazon Associates Program and Netflix Reverse Course

I got this email last summer. It was quite a shock and came without warning. It was notice that I was about to be unceremonious booted from the Amazon Affiliate Program:

Notice of Contract Termination Due to Potential New California Law
Amazon.com Associates Program
Jun 29, 2011

Hello,

For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state…


And then followed the boot…

Notice of Termination due to New California Law
Amazon.com Associates Program
Jun 29, 2011

Hello,

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011. Those California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned before today will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule…

Well.. ok. Luckily I don’t make my living from such things. Those people who do were up a creek. But today we’re back in apparently:

Important Update for California Associates
Amazon.com Associates Program
Oct 6, 2011

Hello,

As you may have heard, California Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation repealing the law that had forced us to terminate our California Associates. We are pleased to invite all California Associates whose accounts were closed due to the prior legislation to re-enroll in the Associates Program…

Why so fickle Jerry and Amazon? Well, upon further research it looks like the reinstatement may be temporary based on a compromise that relieves some retailers of the tax requirement for the time being.

Netflix, however has permanently dumped it’s plans to split it’s business into two: Netflix and Quickster. When I first heard about it I thought “Wow. That seems like a really dumb idea.” I can understand their move to recover costs by charging for both their streaming and disk program separately. In fact I felt a little guilty for the good deal I was getting from them for the past year or so… basically unlimited streaming entertainment for no additional cost to my basic 1 disk service.

Trying to dump their dying disc based business into a new company, however,  seemed doomed to fail. Quickster looked like the anchor that could pull the whole thing, Netflix and all, into Davey Jones Locker. Luckily, Netflix’s CEO has a newly acquired taste for crow, based on the multiple emails of apology I’ve received from him recently.

So, the moral of the story is, no matter how stupid a mistake you make, you can always  make it right.

Delicious.com Not So Delicious Anymore (for Link Builders)

UPDATE: As of October 2011 there is a new Delicious in town. The new version does not appear to have an RSS Feed, but more information on its SEO potential to come. Check back, or subscribe to our feed…

Delicious.com (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site that was one of the first of its kind. It allows  you to save web links, along with tags, a title and description, to your personal bookmarks page. This bookmarks page is public.

The value of social bookmarking sites for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is that you can place links to your own websites on  your bookmark page, and they will show up as backlinks to the search engines, giving you the all-important link authority that search engines use to rank their results.

The problem with this scenario is that for links to be counted as backlinks, the page they appear on needs to be indexed by the search engine in question. And as of this writing, I see NO delicious.com user bookmark pages appearing in the Google index. Nor do I see any of the tag pages, which contain lists of links based on bookmark tags, in the Google index.

What I do see is that 123 bookmarks have been created in the last minute. I just hope it’s not for SEO link-building, because it’s not going to work!

 

Audible.com Sucks

I just purchased a “books on CD” offering from Amazon.com that was available for download from Audible.com, which is an Amazon company. Big mistake, unless you like wasting time and money, and don’t need to actually hear the audio you purchased. If you are a glutton for punishment however, by all means purchase Audible audio from Amazon. Follow these 7 easy steps:

Step One: Pay the Money

Step Two: Realize you need to download and install the Audible Manager audio player in order to listen to your “mp3”

Step Three: Audible Player crashes when you try to install it.

Step Four: Once you get it installed and try to download your audio, your “download link” downloads a file called “admhelper” which is of no help in doing anything whatsoever, as far as I can tell.

Step Five: Chat with support who tells you that it looks like the software is not installed correctly (duh) and furthermore you don’t have an account (which I am logged into). Can they help you set one up?

Step Six: Uninstall Audible Manager, at which point the uninstaller crashes.

Step Seven: Call 1-888-283-5051 and ask for your money back. This is one process that have down pat. Obviously I’m not the first.