On Monday morning I received an email from Amazon.com saying that they are no longer continuing the Associates program for Coloradans:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers.

Colorado just passed a law requiring online retailers to charge sales tax on items sold over the internet (HB 10-1193). As a result Amazon basically fired all of their associates in the State of Colorado. In a statement the Governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter said:

Amazon has taken a disappointing – and completely unjustified – step of ending its relationship with associates. While Amazon is blaming a new state law for its action, the fact is that Amazon is simply trying to avoid compliance with Colorado law and is unfairly punishing Colorado businesses in the process.

I’m disappointed by what has happened but it got me thinking of my history with Amazon and how I got started on the web.

“Back in the Day”

My first real site, back in the day, was a web site for Sim City 2000 cheat codes. I started the site in 1994 and by 1996 the site was receiving upwards of 2000 hits a day. The web site sat on a school district server and didn’t allow advertisements (although not too many people advertising on the web back them). I wanted to get my own domain name but Network Solutions was the only one selling them, and for a 12 year old, $75 was a LOT of money!

JessOnline.com

In April of 1999 I purchased JessOnline.com and moved my SimCity sites (both SimCity2000 and SimCity 3000 sites) to this domain (I let the domain name expire in 2003). This was about the time that Amazon.com started up their Associate program. Back them they only sold books but gave their associates 15%! I signed up and received my first payment in April 1999:

Back then they sent checks! I can’t believe I found this statement, it was with my cease and desist letter from Cisco (keep reading…)

Free Domain Names!

I realized that SimCity was eventually going to run out of steam and I looked for a new site to start. I had been playing the flute for a few years and decided to create a flute site, under the JessOnline.com domain. In 2000 Network Solutions was declared a monopoly and domain name registrations became open to others to sell. A few companies offered free domain names, so I registered a bunch: FluteInfo.com, ErieCops,com, CheapCiscoBooks.com just to name a few.

I created web sites and added Amazon product links. During the holiday seasons I created shopping stores for visitors which did quite well. Amazon started selling music and I was able to link classical flute CDs to FluteInfo.

Cisco sends me a C&D

As I mentioned I registered the domain name CheapCiscoBooks.com and put links to Cisco Course Books from Amazon on it. This site sold a lot more products than the SimCity and Flute site! Here is one of the subpages; no laughing at the design, it was a long time ago!

Cisco didn’t like me using their name in a domain name and in November of 2000 sent me a cease and desist:

View PDF version

Dear Sirs,
I am writing to you on behalf of Cisco Systems, Inc. (“Cisco”). We recently became aware of your registration of the domain name, cheapciscobooks.com, which includes our well-known and registered trademark CISCO. This causes Cisco intellectual property concerns.

“Sirs”…lol…I was 15 years old!;

In the letter they state:

While Cisco notes that the domain you have registered is not yet in use, Cisco is concerned …

Well I was using the domain name, I guess they didn’t do their research. I shut down the site pretty quickly after receiving this letter!

After that

For the next few years FluteInfo.com took off and it replaced my SimCity web sites. It was a lot of fun and I continued to add to it whenever I learned something new. I created a “store” with Amazon products that did well. As Amazon.com continued to add more products I was able to sell items my visitors actually wanted, like sheet music, metronomes and even Flutes (although they were poor quality).

Google Adsense

In September of 2003 I started the Google Adsense program. I added advertisements on FluteInfo.com and that January I got my first paycheck of $23.76. It was slow earning, but over the past few years Amazon.com had lowered their associate’s payments. From 15% down to 10% to 5%; these days I believe it is as low as 2.5%. I latched on to Google Adsense and put it on some of my other upcoming sites, like PracticeSightReading.com.

Around 2006 the percent Amazon was paying was so small that it wasn’t really worth perusing. I left the store up and the product links but didn’t add any new ones. Revenue from Amazon started to dwindle.

Today

This week I went through my site and removed 266 Amazon links from my sites. I assume I missed one or two but I’ll find them later. I am disappointed to no longer be working with Amazon. I didn’t make too much money with them in the past few years, but I had worked with them for 11 years and it is sad to no longer have that partnership.

I don’t know who is to blame for this decision. Last year in the State of Colorado, Amazon Associates earned over 37 million dollars. Those individuals have to pay taxes around 30% for the money earned. That is a lot of tax revenue that will no longer be collected. However, I assume the amount of money collected for charging taxes for online purchases is higher.

Tags: amazon, associates, colorado, legal