I would not normally post anything on this blog that is related to politics, but the Colorado state government has screwed a number of it’s constituents.

Let this be a warning to you in other states who are wanting to generate additional income online. This may be coming to a state you live in!

I live in Colorado, and today I received an email from Amazon, letting me know that thanks to the misguided legislation (HB 10-1193) passed by our state legislature, I could no longer be an Amazon affiliate.

Our state government, in all of its wisdom, decided it needed to try to collect more tax revenue by charging sales taxes on internet based transactions.

This is a bad law, and puts too much of a burden on affiliate networks, and Amazon was the first to reject the requirement, and will no longer allow affiliates doing business in Colorado.

I don’t receive much income from Amazon, so it will not affect me as much as it will affect others. Image waking up one day to find out all the sites you have been working on, building affiliate income on, are now worthless to you. Those affiliates who prepared for this may be okay – for now. If they saw this coming and moved to another affiliate network, good for them.

But, I am concerned that other affiliate networks will follow Amazons lead and thousands of Coloradoans will lose income.

It continues to amaze me how our local and federal governments continue to screw its citizens, in a time of great financial hardship.

Government continues to grow and consume at an alarming rate, while those of us contributing to the tax base are punished more and more. Has all common sense been lost in this country? Don’t they understand that being unfriendly to small businesses, taking more income from small business results in less tax revenue to draw from?

There will be those who blame Amazon for this, but Amazon fought this bill and gave fair warning that they would not participate in what they see as an unconstitutional law.

As Amazon stated in the email to Colorado affiliates:
“As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.”

If you are a resident of Colorado, I encourage you to contact Governor Ritter here and your state legislators

If you are not a resident of Colorado, pay attention to bills being passed by your state legislatures.

Well, I’m off to look at all my websites to see where I need to change my affiliate programs from Amazon to some other affiliate network.

You know, I’m not that far from Wyoming, perhaps I am ready for a move to southern Wyoming. No state income tax, and they still value freedom and small business.

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Amazon, Colorado and Affiliates

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Weekly DoFollow Blogs Tweets for 2010-03-07

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Weekly DoFollow Blogs Tweets for 2010-02-28

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Weekly DoFollow Blogs Tweets for 2010-02-21

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Weekly DoFollow Blogs Tweets for 2010-02-14

I have blogged about those changes as I have made them, but I thought a short summary was in order since I think a number of users of the directory have missed the recent changes.

For those who have a blog listed in the blog directory:

1.  I am periodically going through blogs in the directory, in a random fashion.  If I review your blog, by looking at comments to see if it is truly dofollow, and if it is family appropriate, I will send a tweet about your blog.

I am sending the tweets from http://twitter.com/dofollowblogs .  This Twitter account is only a few weeks old, and it has 60 followers as of today.  I have no advertising of this Twitter account, other than on this blog and on the Followlist.com front page. So, I assume the followers of the Dofollow Blogs Twitter account are looking for dofollow blogs to comment on.

I expect this account to grow in followers over the next few months, so you could get a lot of eyeballs looking at your blog.

When I review your blog, using the criteria laid out above, if it fails my review I will suspend your blog, and of course not tweet about it.  Hopefully, this will encourage you to remain dofollow.

If you suddenly find your blog has disappeared from the directory, It’s probably because it has been suspended.  If you choose to turn remove nofollow and become dofollow, I will un-suspend your blog after I have manually reviewed it.

2.  Users of the dofollow list now have the ability to report blogs that violate the rules above (Is Dofollow and family appropriate). If your blog is reported, I will review your blog and either okay it, or suspend it.

3.  I have recently added a caching feature to the directory to speed it up.  One of the drawbacks of having a database driven website that gets a good amount of traffic, is that it starts to experience slow load times and database errors.

To solve this, the site now loads pages into a temporary cache, without accessing the database.  This improves load speed.  The only drawback, is that newly added blogs may not appear in the directory right away, it may take up to 10 minutes to appear.

For those of you using the list for finding blogs where you can leave comments:

1.  You now have the ability to report blogs that are not really dofollow.

As stated above, I am also tweeting about manually reviewed dofollow blogs.  You can receive 4-5 daily tweets about blogs that I have personally reviewed and verified to be dofollow.  Just follow http://twitter.com/dofollowblogs

I appreciate your help in cleaning up my dofollow list, to make it the cleanest free dofollow list.

2.  The site should now load faster, see point 3 above

I hope to make some enhancements soon, like allowing blog owners to have their blogs flagged as using KeywordLuv, and/or CommentLuv.  As a user of the list, is this something you would like to see?

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Recent DoFollow Blog Directory Changes

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Weekly DoFollow Blogs Tweets for 2010-01-31

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Weekly DoFollow Blogs Tweets for 2010-01-24

I will be sending Twitter Tweets of blogs in the directory that I have verified to be DoFollow.

This is good news for you if you are looking for DoFollow blogs to comment on.

Unfortunately, some blogs in the DoFollow list are actually nofollow blogs. In order to cleanup the directory and weed out dead blogs and nofollow blogs, I have asked users to report those blogs as they come across them.

In addition, I am randomly reviewing blogs in the directory a number of times a day. As I come across valid dofollow blogs, I will tweet you about them. If they are not dofollow, I will be suspending them.

So, when you follow my Twitter Tweets, you will know that blogs mentioned in those tweets have been verified as being dofollow.

If you have a blog in the DoFollow Blog Directory that has been verified to be a dofollow blog, I will be tweeting your blog.

Initially, I thought about tweeting new blogs as they were submitted to the Followlist.com dofollow blog list, but that would not have been fair to those who have been a member of the list for some time.

So, I will be randomly choosing blogs throughout the day that are dofollow and are family appropriate. All dofollow blogs will be tweeted about once, until all are done, and then I will start the process again.

So, follow me at http://twitter.com/dofollowblogs and keep a look out for your blog.

By the way, if you discover that your blog is no longer in the directory, it is probably because it was tagged as a nofollow blog. The database still contains your blog information, and your blog can be added back into the dofollow list if you make your blog dofollow. Just contact me at my Helpdesk and let me know your blog is now dofollow and provide me with your blog link. If I verify that your blog is dofollow, I will add it back into the directory.

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I Will Send You Tweets of DoFollow Blogs

Since it is impossible for me to monitor all the blogs in the directory, I need your help flagging those blogs. Below each blog, you will see a “Report Blog As DoFollow or Inappropriate” link.

Clicking on this link will open a new window that will allow you to submit that blog for review. I will then review the blogs and either suspend them from the blog list, or okay them as being dofollow and appropriate.

Suspended blogs will no longer be shown in the directory. Blogs that I okay will remain in the directory, but will have been identified as having been reported in the past.

As you are visiting blogs in the dofollow blog list, please report blogs that are nofollow, are not family friendly, or go to a dead site.

When flagging a site you think it is nofollow, please make sure you have actually looked at comments on the blog and have made sure those comments are indeed nofollow.

Here are some ways to find out if the blog comment links are dofollow or nofollow.

Thank you for your help in making the Followlist.com DoFollow Blog Directory, the best DoFollow Blog Directory – and keeping it free!

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Please Report Non DoFollow Blogs