Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

How You Can Support a Small Business This Season

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Many of my friends are small business owners in one way or another. Whether they are online marketers who make their money from their websites, brick and mortar owners with a storefront, or home businesses that sell popular beauty and home products, many are making their livings in part or in whole from their small business.

Personally, my main source of income is my website Sunshine Rewards. As is the case for many of you, the holiday season can either make or break us. We look forward to Q4 with the anticipation that a strong quarter will help us keep our business at least one more year.

Running a business is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never done it themselves. It’s great to be your own boss, but it’s also a stress like none other.

How many times have you seen a friend or company go out of business and you said “Oh no! I loved that company!” but in reality you hadn’t given them any business for years…if at all?

As a business owner, let me tell you a few ways that you can support small businesses this season and help us see another year. Although we would love your financial support as well, these don’t cost a penny!

Social Media

Social media is a double edged sword for small businesses. It’s “free” advertising but it’s also a game you have to play almost full-time to win. “Liking” a company’s Facebook page is a good start. However, if not enough people interact with the posts on that page, Facebook will quit showing the posts to EVERYONE. It’s not quite that simple with the other social media sites, but the gist is the same.

Simply interacting with the business on social media will help them immensely. Leave an actual comment on one of their Facebook or Instagram posts. Retweet something on Twitter. It doesn’t even have to be something commercial. Most businesses post “fun” things as well. The more you interact with them, the more other people will see their posts and the company will get the free exposure.

Leave a Review

Many businesses have places where you can leave reviews for them. Some of them have business pages on Facebook with the review option. If they are a brick and mortar, you can leave comments on Yelp or through Google.

If you don’t see a place to review the company, do a search in Google for the company’s name and the word “review.” If they are an online company, there will probably be a few comparison websites with review option. Positive reviews will help the company rise in rankings and attract new business.

Tell a Friend

Studies show that people are more likely to try something if they hear about it from a friend than from any other source. That means YOU are a small business’s biggest source of advertising. Your friends are probably looking for a good place to eat or to buy this or that or to get a good deal. Why not share with them a small business that you know and trust? Your friend AND the small business will be winners.

There are around 28 million small businesses in the U.S., and there is a good chance your friends own some of them. Consider what you can do this holiday season to help them (us!!) out and keep over 50 million people in the U.S. employed.

How do you support small businesses? What else should we be doing?

I Failed at Affiliate Marketing

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My younger daughter is starting high school on Wednesday. Last week we had a long heart-to-heart about her biggest fears going into high school. More than anything else, she told me that she is afraid of trying something and failing. She’s afraid of what failure feels like. She’s afraid everyone will make fun of her.

In talking things through with her, I realized that what I was telling her is really a lesson to anyone starting out in a new business–and affiliate marketing in particular. I told her that I have failed miserably in affiliate marketing. I have had some SPECTACULAR failures over the last 12 years. Some of them kind of embarrassing. However, if you don’t take a chance and allow yourself to fail, you will also never have the chance to succeed.

Sometimes failing just plain stinks and you lose all around. Have you ever heard of Badugi? Probably not. Back in 2006 I launched a site called “Learn Badugi” to teach people how to play a supposedly up-and-coming type of poker. I registered a domain, launched WordPress, added content…even had t-shirts printed. My tagline was “The Fastest Growing Poker Game in the U.S.” The only thing I learned from that site is that Google doesn’t like gambling. The site was so bad I can’t even pull it up on the Wayback Machine to show you.

Sometimes when you fail you learn something new you can use the knowledge somewhere else. That happened to me when I launched The Mean Mom back in 2011. It was meant to be a funny site where moms could share stories about being called “mean” by their kids. I ran contests, set up polls, and even started a shop for Mean Mom merchandise. It didn’t make any money and lasted less than a year. But I learned about BuddyPress, setting up CafePress stores, and just how many moms are “mean.” I even had a totally low-grade logo:

More often than not, “failure” is just one more step toward eventual success. I can’t even tell you the number of things that we have tried and failed with at Sunshine Rewards. We had the best of intentions for gift reminders, paid music recommendations, leaderboards, chat rooms, virtual pinball (yes…that was a thing on SR for a couple of years), and more.

Some of the ideas fell so flat we had to apologize to members and merchants. Some of them just didn’t do what we wanted so we abandoned them or shifted focus from them. Yet each thing we tried helped us learn more about our members, the market, and even our own capabilities. We still exist now in a very difficult market because we were willing to try and fail until we found what worked.

So I’m going to leave you with a few witty quotes I found about failure because other people have said things more eloquently than I can. Consider them the next time you want to try something and are afraid of failing. Or after you fail and you are trying to dust yourself off.

Doubts Kill More Dreams Than Failure Ever Will

Storms Make Trees Take Deeper Roots

Try and Fail But Don’t Fail to Try

When was the last time you tried something and failed? Do you find a way to see the best in your failures or let them stop you from trying again?

New Indiana Nexus Tax Law Is Bad All Around

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Back in April with very little fanfare (or public comment), Indiana passed a law requiring out of state merchants to start collecting sales tax on online purchases made by Hoosiers. Although affiliate nexus legislation had been proposed in the past by Democrats, Republican State Senator Luke Kenley always made sure it was shut down. Now Kenley was one of the driving forces behind the new economic nexus tax. I’ll break down what it entails and why it is a bad idea for Indiana right now.

The Law

House Bill 1129 provides that an out of state merchant must collect sales tax on Internet purchases if the merchant either makes 200 or more separate transactions in Indiana in a year or their gross revenue from Indiana sales exceeds $100,000 in a year. The law took effect July 1, 2017.

The Rationale Behind the Law

State legislators believe that Indiana is losing out on too much tax revenue because people do not self report the taxes that they owe and it isn’t fair to in-state merchants who do have to collect the tax. Kenley stated that local businesses were at a “disadvantage” having to collect the taxes. The possible tax revenue that we are losing is often cited by both parties as being between $77 and $195 million based on studies in 2012. (Indy Star article)

The Rationale is Wrong

First of all, local merchants are not at any real disadvantage based on the tax issue. The Performance Marketing Association recently surveyed over 750 online shoppers. Only 1% said that one of the top reasons that they shop online is to avoid taxes. That means that at most, local merchants are missing out on 1% of their sales based on the sales tax issue. Conversely, they receive a lot of local benefits such as police and fire protection, roads, etc. I don’t want to see the mom and pop store go out of business, but if they do, it won’t be because they have to collect taxes on purchases.

Second, those numbers of projected tax revenue loss would be MUCH less than the 2012 projections. Amazon started collecting taxes in Indiana as of January 1, 2014. Yes, online shopping numbers have gone up since the study in 2012. However, much of that is from companies with physical locations in Indiana who are already collecting taxes (Best Buy, Walmart, etc). In fact, looking at Slice Intelligence’s numbers for the 2016 holiday season, at least 9 of the top 10 merchants for online spending were collecting taxes–for a total of over 60% of shopping. Imagine what those numbers look like when you throw in all of the other brick and mortars plus the merchants who were already voluntarily collecting.

We Have a Lot to Lose Now

The legislators know Indiana is in for a fight. South Dakota is already undertaking substantial judicial action to enforce their very similar law. In fact, our legislators specifically said that they anticipate the impending litigation. How much money will it cost taxpayers to defend this new law rather than waiting for the Supreme Court to take up the South Dakota case or for Congress to pass one of the several bills currently proposed that would end this whole thing? Attorneys will be the biggest beneficiary of this law for quite some time.

In addition to the money defending the law, the state is ALREADY losing income tax money as a result of passing it. Zulily sent out an email to all of the affiliates in the state saying that they are dropping them. Which other merchants will follow suit? The state just lost any income tax from affiliates in programs that drop any type of nexus state affiliates.

Taking that a step further, a business like mine (Sunshine Rewards) will now lose customers in general because I have lost a merchant like Zulily. So not only do I lose the Zulily revenue but I also lose all of the business of my members who want to shop through a website that works with Zulily. And for every dollar Sunshine Rewards loses, the State of Indiana loses the income tax on it. Multiply me across all of the affiliates in Indiana and we’ll see an immediate drop in tax revenue starting with our next quarterly filings.

Some of my biggest competitors have either moved out of the country or are owned by companies outside of the country–in many cases to avoid state issues like this. How is that good for Indiana or Americans in general?

Businesses came to Indiana after Illinois passed an affiliate nexus tax. Will those same businesses now make the decision to leave Indiana as a result of our law?

Right Motives, Wrong Execution

I understand that Indiana wants to capture more tax revenue (ironically it was the Republicans who passed this law despite always saying “no new taxes”). However, this law was passed without any real understanding of the potential implications for all of the affiliate marketers in the state. We were never given the chance to plead our case or even explain the ramifications. In trying to save the “little guy” small businesses on Main Street, they harmed the “little guy” small businesses run by work-at-home moms and dads, retirees, and other entrepreneurs. From a pure numbers standpoint, this law will cost Indiana a lot of money in the short-term with only the HOPE that it may make the state money in the long-term.

How You Can Earn Money (And Help Me!)

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Most of the year I go about my business posting helpful tips and not asking anything in return. As we approach my “big season,” I’m going to ask my friends for a little help.

Although a lot of what I do involves blogging, legal tips, and industry advice, my primary revenue comes from Sunshine Rewards. It’s what keeps me in this business and gives me the time to do all of the “free” stuff I do like the blog posts, podcasts, speaking engagements, etc.

They say if you want something, you have to ask for it. So I am asking.

If you shop online, will you give Sunshine Rewards a chance this holiday season? You get $5 just for signing up. If you only use coupons, that’s great! We have coupons you can use to save yourself money (and help me make some). If you like getting cash back on your purchases, even better! I split all of my commissions with you.

If you are a blogger, will you consider promoting Sunshine Rewards? We don’t have an affiliate program, but we DO have a referral program. You get $5 when your referral hits $10 (and we start them with $5!). It’s an easy way for you to rack up money with just a post or a couple of social media mentions. Especially if you encourage them to get to that $10 mark with a couple of suggestions. [Read more…]

Look Past the Smiles to the Purpose

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For the last 3 years I have participated as a part of the Affiliate Marketers Give Back team in the Avon 39 Walk to End Breast Cancer. 

Each year you see me posting happy, smiling pictures at the start line, the finish line, the mile markers, and even the medic tent. I share my journey via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and text messages. It looks like I am having a great time, loving every minute of it. 

That’s part of the story….but certainly not all of it. 

I don’t participate in the walk because it’s fun. While I enjoy my time with my teammates, I’m not going to lie. It is hard. For every picture you see of me smiling, there was a time when I was crying because: 

  • I saw a walker with his mom’s picture pinned to his back and he told me how many years ago he lost her to breast cancer.
  • My blisters were so bad that I was bleeding through my socks.
  • 5 20-something women were all walking in front of me with the same name pinned to their backs. When the crowd parted, I saw the named woman (also only in her 20s) walking in the middle of the group.
  • My back was so sore I was popping ibuprofen like candy and layering on hot patches to be able to sleep.
  • A group of survivors stood along the parade route thanking me for walking for THEM.
  • When it came time to write the names of who I was walking in honor of on my tag, I had too many names to fit on the sheet.
  • I had to tell my teammates that one of the friends I walked for the year before lost her life in the interceding year as a result of complications from her breast cancer battle.
  • My teammate’s mom, a breast cancer survivor herself, came every single year to greet us at the finish line.
  • A group of survivors who walked the walk was honored with a parade into the closing ceremonies and they cheered and laughed and cried and let us celebrate them.

So many tears over those 39.3*3 miles…and more now as I think back on my 3 walks.

Today I’m asking for your support in my next 39 miles. I have to raise $1800 in the next 60 days. It’s amazing how every single donation from $5 to $500 adds up to get me there. $3 from each of my 700 Facebook friends would put me over the top.

If the money isn’t in your budget or you’ve already given for another great cause, like I know so many of my friends do, will you help share this post in the hopes that someone else might help me?

You’ll hear more from me about this over the next 60 days, including more of the reasons that this walk is so important to me. I hope that you can find it in your heart to support me!