Here’s what the bill proposes in short:

• No new taxes.
• Applied only to taxes already imposed by the states that are not being collected.
• Provide states with the clear authority to require retailers to collect sales taxes already owed.*
• Treat all retailers equally regarding sales tax collection.
• Release consumers, currently expected to calculate and send in the taxes themselves.
• Exemption for small online retailers.

We need to look past the rhetoric in the dialog and focus on the bigger picture. For example framing this issue as leveling the playing field for offline retailers is ridiculous. Shipping and handling cost often times outweigh sales tax. So to assume that retailers are choosing e-commerce to avoid a sales tax is not grounded. Consumers are using e-commerce more and more for many different reasons. Some are shopping more online because the internet has mastered the “long tail” approach. Some are shopping online because online retailers can offer a completely customized shopping experience. Many are shopping online because they are just lazy.

But like I said we need to look past the rhetoric and move past this issue so that more business owners have the opportunity to succeed online. The only way we are going to do that is a federal solution that lays a ground work for how online retailers collect taxes across the country.

I also think that this legislation will put to rest the debate in the affiliate marketing space. With this type of legislation we wouldn’t see Amazon or other large affiliate programs pulling out of states to avoid sales tax.

Ebay is coming out against this bill citing that it would harm small online retailers. I am concerned with that as well. I would be interested in an amendment that take’s the concerns of small business into account.

*I am not a big fan of this provision. I mean that could be like a decade of taxes for some companies. I am willing to bet it was thrown in to appease a state supporter, but Durbin is willing to use it as a bargaining chip if he needs to.

Luckly I have discovered a cool way to integrate your blog and many popular social networks into Google+ very easily. The trick is to use the under appreciated, “post by email” feature found in many social services. Basically the way this works is a social network assigns you an unique email address. Every time you send an email to that address it is automatically posted to your network. This feature is commonly used to integrate mobile devices that can only send text messages. But we are going to use it to tie in Google+.

Post To WordPress From Google+

1. To start off you are going to want to go to Gmail or any free email provider and get an email address. Make sure you make it something that no one would ever guess. Something like 32v4n8o8h@gmail.com. Also while you are there find out the POP3 address of the provider.
2. Next login to your WP dashboard and go to Settings > Writing.
3. Scroll down til you see a Post to Email section that looks like this:
4. 
5. Fill this form out completely including the POP3 address where it says “Mail Server”.
6. Next go to Users > Add New and add a new user with the email that you just created. Make sure that the name and email are the email address and give the user ‘admin’ rights.
7. Because WordPress doesn’t want blogs constantly bombarding mail servers, they require that you load a script to prompt email/post retrieval. You can do this by either having a cron job ping example.com/wp-mail.php or you can include this simple HTML in your theme’s footer.
8. Finally go to Google+ and create a new Circle. You can call it blog, WordPress, or whatever you want. Go to add the email address that you just created and tied to your blog, to the new circle.
9. Now when ever you want to share a Google+ post on your blog as well, just add your “blog” circle to the list of users you are sharing with. Make sure that “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+” is checked, and hit Share.

You can use this technique to tie in more than one blog, you just have to tie in that same email address to all the blogs.

Post To Twitter From Google+

Because Twitter doesn’t provide a post by email feature by default we are going to need the help of Posterous.com.

1. Create an account at Posterous.
2. Under the Auto Post section make sure to tie in your Twitter account.
3. Grab the email address that looks something like yourname@posterous.com
4. Head over to Google+ and create a new circle.
5. Add the email address that you just got from posterous, to the new circle.
6. When ever you want to share a Google+ post on Twitter as well, just add your “Twitter” circle to the list of users you are sharing with. Make sure that “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+” is checked, and hit Share.

The really cool thing about using posterous like this, is that you can incorporate many different networks along with Twitter.

Post To Facebook From Google+

1. Login to Facebook.
2. Go to facebook.com/mobile/
3. Towards the bottom of the screen you will see a section called “Upload via Email”.
4. Copy the email listed is that section. It should look like something@m.facebook.com
5. Head over to Google+ and create a new circle.
6. Add the email address that you just got from Facebook, to the new circle.
7. When ever you want to share a Google+ post on Facebook as well, just add your “Facebook” circle to the list of users you are sharing with. Make sure that “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+” is checked, and hit Share.

If you don’t want to setup a new circle for each network, you can setup one and call it something like, “outside network” or “everyone else”. Anyways, good luck!

I have noticed a recent trend with in the SEO community to push Google to take action in several areas that I believe have an adverse effect on SEO. In many cases I see very well respected SEOs pushing Google to in effect make their jobs (and everyone else’s) harder. Here are two examples:

Exact Match Domains So you are upset that some domain that has exact match, ranks higher than you. I get that. What I don’t get is pushing Google to do something about it. Buying exact match domains has to be one of the best ways to aggressively take over a niche. But guess what? If you keep complaining about it, they will do something about it! So shut up already and buy your own!

Content Farms This one completely boggles my mind. Content farms exist because they are highly lucrative. I know that you are tired of seeing them out rank you at every turn. But how about instead of complaining publicly about it, you build your own! I am not saying that you need to spam the results with low quality content. But you can learn a lot about content development, content monetization, and syndication by mimicking content farms. And the greatest thing is that they are cheap to get started, and maintain. Google will even help you monetize them!

There are a whole host of other things SEOs complain publicly about that I wish they would just shut up about. I understand the desire to hold Google to a higher standard, and make sure they deliver on what they promise. But why do that at the expense of making your job/income harder to achieve?? Just shut up already!

Whats makes 22 different?

Marketing with roots. Some of you may know that before I got into Internet marketing, I was heavily involved in grassroots political action. Grassroots activism at its heart is marketing. In both marketing and grass roots advocacy, we promote ideas, organize people around information, and sell hope. 22 Media will approach our marketing campaigns by blending the fundamentals of both Internet marketing and grassroots advocacy.

People matter. I am a firm believer that people matter. Clients, contractors, customers, users, artist, engineers and everyone else, all play an important role in how we run our business and engage the world. I only want the best of the best involved with 22. Therefore, one of my first moves with 22 will be to build an invite only partnership network of artist, engineers, and content producers. Together we will work on projects of the highest quality. We might not be the cheapest, but you can rest assured that the folks working on your finished product have high standards of excellence and produce nothing but the very best!

If you want a web marketing and development company that expects nothing but the very best in everything we do and engage, then give 22 Media LLC a call!

The responses below appear in the order in which they were received.

Q: Whats the most important thing for new entrepreneurs to understand when launching a new business or product?

Andy Beal

Author of Radically Transparent & CEO of Trackur.com

Not sure if this is THE most important thing, but as the CEO of a SaaS tool, I can tell you it’s one that I did not anticipate–but deal with each day: Managing our customers’ feature requests.

When you launch your product, you have a vision of what that product is going to look like, what it’s going to do, and the audience it’s going to serve. In the early days, it can be easy to get caught playing “shoot the squirrel.” It’s an imaginary game I made up.

When you receive feature requests, you have two choices: shoot the squirrel or shoot the deer. When your company is presented with lots of random feature requests, it can be easy to get distracted by them. You want to please that paying customer, so you drop everything to add that little feature. Unfortunately, that feature request is just a squirrel, because it only feeds that one, single customer. It’s a feature only they find of use.

Instead, you have to hunt for the deer. The deer represents the feature requests that you hear about, over and over again. These are the changes that will make many users happy–and likely attract many more just like them. In other words, shooting the deer feeds many more people than just one squirrel.

By all means, you should listen to your customers. But notice I used the plural: customers. Listen for consistently requested features, and you’ll build a better product. Focus on the single, isolated feature request, and you’ll be dining on squirrel tonight!

Neil Patel

Quick Sprout

Entrepreneurs need to understand that they won’t get the buzz and traction that they are looking for if they aren’t solving a problem. It doesn’t matter how sexy your business is, all that matter is if you are solving a big enough problem.

If you do this, you’ve built a long term business that has a chance of making money instead of something that just creates buzz and dies down within a few weeks.

Julien Smith

Co-author of Trust Agents & blogger of In Over Your Head

It’s critical to know that emotional attachment and familiarity with a subject/point of view do not a successful business make. We tend to think about the opportunities around us and believe that everyone thinks the way we do. They don’t. Wanna start an upscale barbershop? Better make sure there’s a market for it that’s more than you alone. This is most obvious in restaurants but exists everywhere else where passion reigns.

Bonus tips: The numbers matter. // Ask people in the industry with experience. // The network is everything.

Seth Godin

Author of Linchpin & blogger at Seth’s Blog

The most important thing to realize is that in a post-industrial age, in a world where google makes everything a click away, you are no longer entitled to my attention (let alone my business) merely because you exist. Power has shifted, and entrepreneurs who create the things we want to share, talk about and seek out will always do better than those that race to the bottom.

Lisa Barone

CBO of Outspoken Media

That it’s going to TAKE OVER THEIR ENTIRE LIVES!

Sorry.

The real answer is “their audience”.

You have to understand your audience – who they are/ /and who you want to be in their world. Your audience is who you’re launching what you’re launching FOR. It’s not for you. It’s to provide a product or service to others. And a lot of entrepreneurs and business folk get tripped up there. They’re coming from a place where they’re experts at what they do, but they’ve forgotten (or they just never learned) how to speak and think like “everyone else”. You’re not marketing towards you and your buddies; you want to hit the “everyone else”.

I wrote a post recently about the dangers of living inside your bubble and I think it’s something way too many of us do. We know what WE want, what WE think is cool and what WE’D buy, but we forget that our audience isn’t at the same level. You have to build for the “everyone else” and stay in their mindset. And it takes stepping outside of yourself and your bubble to figure out how you can be useful to someone else and how you can offer something exciting.

Another part of understanding your audience is identifying who you want to be in their eyes. Everyone needs a point of difference, an angle or a way to tie themselves to an experience. At Outspoken Media we create a very different experience than most other SEO companies. And we attract an audience who responds to that. You have to figure out your place and how you’re going to market yourself to your audience. If you’re a local coffee shop, who are you? Are you home to the $1.00 cup of coffee, the overpriced café, the green cafe, a place for coworking, a place for moms and their kids, coffee snobs, etc. How can niche can you make your audience?

There’s so much that goes into creating a business and starting down that entrepreneurial path, but I think one of your first concerns has to be your audience. Who are they, where are they and how can you reach them? That’s what you need to understand.

Chris Brogan

Co-author of Trust Agents & blogger of ChrisBrogan.com

The most important thing for entrepreneurs to understand is that the human network is everything. Build relationships before you need them. Help them more than you ask for help. Fuel their success long before you need them for your own. And then, when the time comes, make your “asks” from them easy to execute and simple to pass on to the rest of their own networks.

Brent Csutoras

Social Media Marketing Consultant

I think the most important thing for an entrepreneur launching a new business or product is to really understand the true value in each marketing or promotional step they take. This might seem like common sense, but a lot of new businesses jump into online marketing without really considering what they are doing.

There is an enormous amount of information on the web telling you about all the things you must do to succeed online, but all things cannot work for all people. Take the time to really review what each marketing opportunity does and how it will have a positive effect for your specific product or project.

In addition to what the various methods of online marketing offer your project, also identify if it is right for you right now. Some aspects of SEO are helpful from the start, but do you really need someone working full time on ranking reports and keyword analysis? Social Media is super popular and effective, but do you really need a full Twitter and Facebook campaign before you ever have something to share or talk about? Paid advertising can drive a ton of business, but how do you know whether you have the best converting page yet?

So when you are about to launch your business or product, really take the time to review each aspect of marketing you want to participate in to see that it is not only going to be effective for accomplishing your goals, but also that it is the right time to get the best value from your efforts. Identify the things that are best suited for you at the moment and then focus on things one step at a time.

I would also recommend finding the leaders in each aspect of marketing you want to employ, and read what they have had to say about their respective fields. Hell… most of the real experts will even be willing to give you a little help or point in the right direction (so long as you are not asking for them to basically do it for you).

Brian Clark

Founder of Copyblogger

That no one cares. Yet. Give them a reason to care first. People search for known products and brands. They’re not searching for you. Give them a reason to. Deliver valuable content related to what you sell that not only makes people care, but that also makes them understand the benefits of doing business with you.

Lee Odden

CEO of TopRank Marketing

Companies that launch a new business or product because of a great idea and perceived market demand really need to make sure they have a firm grasp of the actual needs of the customers they’re trying to reach. How you go about this varies by product and audience of course, but there is no substitute to doing the homework of understanding the market.

There are numerous stories of great ideas going to market and failing because there was no market for the product outside the imagination of the entrepreneur. When it comes to software or online services/businesses, networking into a group of savvy and influential users provides product development insight and grass roots enthusiasm for spreading the good word.

Participating in forums, chats, social networks and using monitoring software to understand how the product category is discussed, what the common issues are and to indentify influentials provides critical insight that can save time and increase value. It’s not enough to come up with a great idea, that idea needs to be capable of creating a momentum of support and enthusiasm. Passion, persistence and agility are also critical for any new venture.

In short, Rae uses Firefox’s Bookmarks in conjunction with custom URLs to turn your address bar into a souped up search machine! Here’s a quick example of how Rae works her magic.

Rae finds a service that uses dynamic URLs such as WhosTalkin.com She then runs a query through the service. As a result we get a URL that looks something like this:

http://www.whostalkin.com/search?q=sugarrae

Next Rae will replace the query in the URL with %s to act as a place holder. So the URL now looks like:

http://www.whostalkin.com/search?q=%s

In Firefox Rae will go to Bookmarks>Organize Bookmarks, then right click on Bookmarks Menu>New Bookmark

So now when Rae goes to her address bar and types “who sugarrae”, she will get a fresh set of results from WhosTalkin.com

Rae takes things a step further by using this hack to run analysis on pages and sites by using the URL in place of a query. For example if she wants to run a Whois check her setup might look like this:

Now when Rae types whois whostalkin.com into her search bar a Whois report from DomainTools.com appears.

Are you starting to see the magic here? If not here are a few of my favorite examples to get you started. Just copy and paste them into the method above.

Bookmarks with URLs:

Shorten URL’s
kl.am
http://kl.am/api/shorten/?url=%s&format=text
TinyURL
http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=%s

Social Bookmarking

StumbleUpon
http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=%s

del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/post?url=%s

FriendFeed
http://friendfeed.com/?url=%s

Digg
http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=%s

Sphinn
http://sphinn.com/submit.php?url=%s

View a Site as Text at SEO-Browser.com

http://www.seo-browser.com/index.php?user_agent=1&address=%s&action=Parse+URL

On Page Keyword Analysis

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml?url=%s

Translate any web page into English:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=%s&sl=auto&tl=en&history_state0=

Bookmarks with Search Queries:

Google News Search

http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%s&cf=all&scoring=n (sorted by date)

Google Blog Search

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%s&scoring=d (sorted by date)

Google Maps

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

Get Yahoo results as a RSS feed:

http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml?appid=yahoosearchwebrss&query=%s


Update Twitter

http://twitter.com/home?status=%s

Have fun playing with these bookmarks and feel free to leave some of your favorites in the comments! Stay tuned for my next post where I kick things up a notch with this bookmark hack and JavaScript!

I have already bought my ticket, but many of you haven’t! So, hurry up and register because like I said before only 200 lucky souls will be there.

The conference organizers are hosting a contest to send one lucky attendee to the conference free of charge. The rules for the contest basically state that all those who enter must write an article detailing 7 things that they predict will happen during the conference. Then tag as many people you like with links. If you have been tagged then you must write and article as well and tag back to the original tagger. Who ever gets the most tags will win.

Allyson Ferguson (aka SEOAly) tagged me in her contest entry.  Allyson really wants to go, but I have already paid for my ticket so, I am going to play along anyways so Allyson can get my linkback.

This will be my first internet marketing conference so I am not really sure what to expect, but I have a feeling that around 85% of the attendees will pee their pants at least once. You see, in every adult’s life there will come a time when something so amazing, so mind blowingly awesome occurs that they lose all bladder control. I think this is called called “urge incontinence“. Most adults don’t start experiencing these awestruck events until in their 80s, but some are lucky enough to piss their pants at a much young age.

Don’t get me wrong, peeing your pants can be embarrassing, especially when around all your “professional” internet marketing colleagues. Therefore to give you a bit of a heads up, I am going to lay out events that might induce pants pissing.

7 Reasons that You will Piss your Pants at IM Spring Break.

• 25% will piss their pants when they hear Rae Hoffman‘s dirty secrets during her NDA Keynote.
• 10% will piss their pants when they learn from Reg Saddler, Todd Mailcoat, and Neal Rodriguez, about the fruits of successful social bookmarking.
• 10% will piss their pants in between sessions when I tell folks about WhosTalkin‘s future plans.
• 10% will piss their pants when they hear from Brent Csutoras, Rae Hoffman, and Wil Reynolds about how to build links like a rock star.
• 10% will piss their pants when they learn from gurus Li Evans, Jeff Quipp, and Brian Chappell about brand building through social media.
• 15% will piss their pants when they discover, that as reports suggest, Dave Snyder is a bear!
• 5% will piss their pants when Jordan Kasteler decides to take his skills offline and attempts to “sphinn” attendees  at the bar.

Wow, I think that Loren, Dave, and Jordan should look into buying some plastic tarps & and cleaning solution. Its either that, or make their conference extremely borining, and we know thats not gonna happen! See ya there!