Through the last five years or so I have tried my hand at affliate links to Amazon.com. Affiliates, such as myself, mention products on their websites, and when visitors visit the Amazon store through my links, I would get a cut of any sales generated on that visit.

For example, I could link to Christopher Nolan's first film, Following. If you clicked that link, followed it to Amazon and bought the DVD, I'd get a 6% commission on that sale.

I usually went overboard with the technique, best illustrated by my "Famous Directors and their Famous Movies" page, where I link to 526 movies that are for sale, or The Remarkable Array of Cordless Power Tools, which is a thinly disguised excuse to showcase 34 power tools for sale on Amazon.

This technique was working out very well, until last week, when Amazon closed my account.

 It wasn't just me. California legislators made it clear that affliates like me are employees of Amazon, represent a "physical presence" in the state, and demanded that Amazon collect and pay sales tax on the items it sells to Californians.

It turns out that charging 8% sales tax on all of California's purchases adds up to a lot of money, so Amazon is fighting back.

On July 1st, they "fired" all of their California affiliates, about 10,000 people and groups.

 I'm disappointed. I have been raking in dozens, if not scores of dollars every month. For example, in June, I earned $69.04 from Amazon. In May, it was $11. That is weird. April was $71. March $48. Feb $58.

Sometimes I was compensated with an Amazon gift card code. Ironically I bought Turbo Tax with my affiliate money in April.

So, now, I am out. I have three good pages of links, and four lame ones, still referring customers, but not generating any money for me or California:

Famous Directors and their Famous Movies
Female Directors and their Movies
Television Shows Out of Their Time
What Does Amazon Sell?
It Would Take 300 Years to Read All the Vampire Books at Target
The Remarkable Array of Cordless Power Tools
The One Page Fiction Quiz part 1
The One Page Fiction Quiz part 2

What do I do?

I could move these over to Barnes and Noble affiliate program, but I think it would be easier to swap out the Amazon IDs on this page for the codes of another Amazon affiliate, outside California.

Do you know anyone that fits that description?