It just got harder to make money on the Internet

According to Wine Industry Insight, wine sites and blogs based in California cannot advertise wine sales sites in the context of commission-based affiliate programs.

It appears, on first glance, that California-based bloggers and site operators would have to pull affiliate ad banners. This would adversely affect web site and blog owners who seek to monetize their content through this route.

It is not clear if this is an absolute, categorical ban or if site operators could acquire an ABC license of some sort.

No details on the ruling or the rationale or precedent behind it yet.

More to come…

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under Politics of Wine, The business of wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “It just got harder to make money on the Internet”

1. spiltwine Says:
   September 11th, 2009 at 7:47 am

   Damn those bureaucrats!!

2. John Kelly Says:
   September 11th, 2009 at 8:58 pm

   Hmmm… Does ABC have any jurisdiction outside California?

3. Dylan Says:
   September 14th, 2009 at 6:04 pm

   I don’t see why that would happen. Where’s the motivation to do that?

4. Ned Says:
   September 21st, 2009 at 5:06 pm

   Are you sure you are understanding the ABC correctly? An ad by a retailer is fee based or click based, not commission based. The blogger is not engaged in the direct sale of wine to consumers and using the license of the retailer to do it. That practice is called “third party sales” I believe and the ABC has issued memos
   warning license holders not to engage in it. Were I to offer wines
   for sale that I was getting from a retailer partner, that would seen as a third party sale. Many wine clubs fall into this category too.
   I’m pretty sure that general advertising with no direct sales involvement is not.