Linden Lab have launched, somewhat quietly, a new affiliate program for Second life in conjunction with Commission Junction. well quietly that is, unless you were emailed about it! Linden Lab may want to fix the hover text on their website, which umm suggests you’re going to the old network.
Details of the program can be found on the Second Life affiliate program page: https://secondlife.com/corporate/affiliate/
The big question is, who can join the affiliate program … I have the answer!
“Web sites that complete the Affiliate Network’s publisher registration and are not based in Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and North Carolina.”
I have no idea why those states are excluded, maybe some of my readers know.
The next question of course is, who on earth are Commission Junction?
I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of them but a cursory glance at their website suggests that some big names are there. They are also making it easy for advertisers to migrate from the Google Advertising Network, according to the blurb anyway.
The Second Life affiliate program is via application, so you can’t just join in the fun and I have no idea what their criteria is. On the other hand, there are plenty of other advertisers on Commission Junction too. Now of course, not everyone likes sites who advertise, so this isn’t something for all and really, to bring in money from advertising like this, you need a lot of traffic, you’re unlikely to be able to give up your day job, unless that is your day job of course!
I tried for months to find out what LL was going to do about the Second Life Affiliate Program when the Google Affiliate Network (GAN) closed down.
Other affiliate programs that I was using via GAN gave me information and ample time to switch over before the July 31st deadline.
Imagine my surprise when I received an email from LL on August 2nd, two days after GAN was already closed!
I already use Commission Junction for other affiliate programs so this works out well for me though I do wish that their Payout Amount was lower!
Handy that you were already using the site though. Yes it would have been nice had there been more notice but I’m glad LL still have the affiliate program.
From what I can see, the payout with CJ is lower than when Google Adsense let you have a payout.
I can only surmise is that the reason for those state exclusions has to do with taxes. Amazon excluded more than a few states because the law, such as it is, only makes companies pay sales tax in locations where they have a “nexus”, otherwise the burden falls on the consumer.
It’s not apples to apples since in this case the consumer is, depending on your point of view, either the company getting the referrals or the referring person (they can’t control who the referred person, so that would seem moot) but if I had to guess without looking into it, I’d guess that they already have a nexus in California and the excluded states are ones that would attempt to charge them taxes.
Ah so Community Junction might well be liable for tax in those areas? In the UK it’s the person who receives the commission who would be liable, I know we have to declare any income from referrals as income for tax purposes anyway.
The tax system everywhere could do with being more consistent.
Some states are excluded because some states tax affiliates. Amazon pulled out of North Carolina for the same reason and this may be true for the Linden Lab program. Commission Junction is a large repository that handles affiliate payments and registration for a variety of companies, GoDaddy uses this service.
Yes they’re a big company and growing, I’ve seen some big names there as new affiliates, German airline Lufthansa for example.
A couple of people have mentioned tax issues, so that must be the reason, just seemed odd when i initially saw that as I don’t recall Google Ad network having those exclusions, maybe one of the reasons they closed is because they saw the tax issues coming.
I have already started using this program. The only thing that is very bad, this is a small selection of types of banners.
“Linden Lab Launch New Second Life Affiliate Program