How to Get an Amazon Associates Affiliate Account When Your State Has Been Banned

Comments

1. Brandon C.

   Amazon is not allowed in my state and that is why I chose Clickbank. I might try it though but only when I have time. I like to stay focused on one thing so I don’t get sidetracked and waste time.

    — Reply
2. Rose

   Thank you for your very informative article. I liked the idea you mentioned about the mailbox. I too was previously excited about signing up as an amazon affiliate. Went through the whole sign up process only to discover at the end that I was not allowed to be their affiliate since I live in Illinois. It was quite a disappointment for me but your article has helped me with thinking outside the box.

    — Reply
3. Randall

   It’s against amazon’s terms of service to do this.

   Maybe, a legal corporation in another state might be the way to go.

    — Reply
4. Gopal Iyer

   Thanks so much for sharing the information. Great ideas to sign up for Amazon associates if they are not allowed in your states.

    — Reply
5. DoktorThomas™

   California, New York, Connecticut, Illinois are progressive strongholds; Democratic progressives don’t believe in individual’s rights nor the Constitution. Mincing no words, move.

   Assuming you live paycheck to paycheck, have an over financed home and are underpaid (making less than $25/hr) like most other Americans, then supplementing income is a necessary evil. Under these factors, moving may be out of the realm of possibilities. Your plight is the result of big oppressive governments, but to explain this is not the purpose of this comment.

   While it is possible to start an out of state business entity (lots of marginally qualified individuals, including licensed professionals, are happy to take your money to help you with the smoke and mirrors of the appearance of being out of state) or rent a POB for receiving mail, it takes more than just an address to make a valid business presence in that other state. Anyone who suggests otherwise is not completely knowledgeable or just mistaken.

   It cannot be emphasized strongly enough, MOVE from these death spiral states.

   Even if one gets a mail box in a more friendly foreign state, despite receiving an Amazon verification there, one cannot physically sell from the remote destination and probably cannot transact (handle/receive money and bank it) there either. All business related acts will take place where you and your computer are located and eventually the money earned will come to where you live. That is the definition of doing business where you live. That means to appear to do otherwise may be knowingly violating the laws of the offensive jurisdictions and probably violates federal wiretap laws–a broadly interpreted law popular with the U.S. Department of inJustice for its flexibility in “hanging” hard to prosecute law violators.

   More and more corporate entities (ebay, paypal, Amazon, banks, Discover, American Express, Diners, the USPS, UPS, FedEx, Target, Sears, Google, Yahoo, your ISP and dozens and dozens of others) freely supply information about you, your habits, your business, your activities, your identity, your picture, your location, etc. to state and federal governments. Thinking you’ll succeed by location deception is a failed plan with potentially dire consequences.

   Did I mention move?? Other option: forget Amazon’s affiliate program. Note, however, they are not the only internet affiliate program run by people with no backbone. Others have followed suit where greedy states demand too much.

   Currently 22 states have gotten together to form a questionably legal quasi-gestapo to force you into collecting state sales tax from your internet buyers on all of their net purchases; those transactions, under current federal case law, are exempt.

   Collecting sales tax on internet transactions is coming. While at first blush that may seem likely and innocuous, paying sales tax to a foreign state for purchases made there by one of its residents is on its face evidence of a transaction taking place in that state. That evidence implies a business presence. If a business has a presence there, it has to be authorized to do business there (registered) and will have to pay income taxes in any state where it has collected state sales tax. Feeling like paying taxes in 50 states?

   No government is your friend.

   Politicians from the two majorly inept political parties have an insatiable desire to squander your money, all of your wealth; they intend on/are taxing you and the nation into oblivion. Ergo, they will not relent on taxing all internet transactions, with state and eventually federal sales taxes. A POB in another more friendly jurisdiction is a thumb hole fix in a cracking dam. Without a change in who is running the country, no jackasses and no truncated mice, the system will collapse on their greed. But again, this is another article’s discussion, not the one for here.

   While there may be ways to run Amazon’s affiliate program in a foreign jurisdiction, the internet is no place to publish those ideas. Besides, the costs of doing that correctly and legally will exceed profits to be had many times over. An out-of-state address, without more, is no panacea.

   The power to tax is the power to destroy. You are seeing that live and in color.

    — Reply
6. David

   If Amazon Associates isn’t available in your state, you can use Viglink as an alternative. They allow you to link to Amazon as well as hundreds of other merchants. They do take a 25% commission, but 75% is better than nothing!

    — Reply
   • Joni

     Viglinks is no longer as of June 18 2013 for banned states. I am still looking for a way to do it

      — Reply