Adam Jewell - Search & Affiliate Marketing

Turbo Tax makes pretty good tax software. There have several different versions that may fit your needs. Unfortunately their IT department isn’t so good. I, like many other tax filers started working on the 2006 income tax return a few months before it was due but didn’t get around to actually filing the return until April 17th, the day taxes were due for the 2006 tax year. Being a tax company, Turbo tax should have anticipated a flood of tax filing on tax day. Intuit is a tax company, ya know?

Around 9 or 10pm on April 17th, I tried to fiile my taxes with theri e-file system. Not so fast, it came back with some kind of computer error. Hmmmm, well maybe the servers were flooded, it could happen to anybody but surely they will get this fixed before midnight. To make a long story short, by 4am they still did not have their act together. It did appear that the tax return had gone though once or twice but when I logged back in to make sure it did go through it said it didn’t.

The next day, Public Relations genius Harry Pforzheimer was quoted as saying “Don’t wait until the last minute is the moral of the story,” he said. Hey, why not just go back to paper and pencil if your tax software company can’t handle a tax day filing rush?

By 4am, Intuit was showing charges on my credit card & by the time the return acrually went through, there were 3 charges for filing one tax return. After feeling like I got hit by a truck the whole next day at work due to the lack of sleep, I called the Intuit customer service department to see what we could do about getting the errant charges refunded.

I had never called India before (but I’d heard horror stories from people who thought they were calling Dell tech support and somehow got routed to India) but somehow managed to talk to a very cordial young woman who could barely speak English. She acknowledged I was charged 3 times but couldn’t do anything about it. I guess it takes 3 days for the charges to be editable in the Intuit computer system. She was able to give me some combination of letters and numbers that I would have to call back later and read off to someone. Oh, and that audit defense product they offer that I always buy? There is another computer system that handles that and another phone number you have to call to take care of that.

I bought one of their Quicken software packages before, discovered it was the wrong one and got no help from the custmer service department at all on that one when trying to upgrade.

A few days aftr this mess, Intuit sent out an email stating that ALL changes for Turbo tax would be refunded. So far 2 out of 3 charges were refunded. It looks like they’ll cling to the last one.

As far as I can tell, the tax return made it in on time. As far as they are concerned, Intuit delivered on what they said they would. Regardless of their guarantees or lack thereof for functionality of the software, there is no way tax filers should have to pay after going thorugh all that. Had Turbo Tax refunded the fees charged, I’d still be a Turbo tax customer.

It is inexcusable for a tax company not to be prepared for a surge of tax returns on tax day, for them to make comments about waiting till the last minute to file taxes, having support representatives that can barely speak English who cannot access or fix orders and causing such a big mess for everyone.

Got any suggestions for relaible tax prep companies next year?

Being self employed has lots of unique financial challenges. Health insurance, having to foot the bill for everything you need and handle everything that comes up. When it comes to saving for retirement, however, you as a self employed individual have some awesome opportunities!

When you work for a company, you may or may not be able to participate in a 401K offered by the company. You can usually save up to about 15% of your pre-tax salary in a 401K but the percentage will vary by company and 401K plan. (Ever wonder why your 401K balance doesn’t seem to go anywhere?) For the 2007 tax year, the most you can put in your 401K is $15,500. If your company is nice, they’ll give you some kind of match that my have to vest over a period of time before it is actually yours to keep.

If you have any self employment income whether you have a regular job or not, you can also contribute to a SEP IRA. That’s right you can participate in an employer sponsored retirement plan as well as a SEP! Unlike traditional IRAs and ROTH IRAs for which the contribution limit is $4,000 for 2007 and $5,000 for 2008 for those under 49 ($5,000 and $6,000 respectively for those 50 and up) you can put up to $45,000 or 25% of your income into your SEP for the 2007 tax year.

Between a SEP and an employer sponsored 401K you could sock away about $60,000 in your retirement accounts and get a HUGE tax deduction for 2007. If you make enough to max out a SEP, well, ya don’t really hae any need for a job. So whether you are an affiliate or self employed in any other capacity, be sure to take advantage of the huge contrbutions you can make to a SEP IRA in 2007!

Though it requires more paperwork, you can also do a solo 401K. Between the employer and employee contributions you can often have much lower income that is needed for a SEP to put around $40,000 away each year tax free.

Holy shit, this is huge!  There had been rumblings for the last few months that DoubleClick was on the block, talking to Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG) and maybe others about a potential sale.  Well, apparently on April 13th, 2007 Google won the bidding war and will be taking over DoubleClick.

3.1 billion seems like a bit of a premium for a company that reportedly made around 300 million last year but it may turn out to be a much better investment than the 1.6 billion Google paid for YouTube.com.  DoubleClick has tons of data as well and many coveted relationships with advertisers and publishers.  Not only does Google gain all this data and all these relationships but Microsoft loses the opportunity to acquire them.

Speaking of Microsoft, one wonders just what they are doing or thinking.    Microsoft was clearly asleep at the wheel while Google became a hundred billion dollar company in the area of web search.  When people think of Google they think of search. 

When people think of Microsoft, what do they think of? 

• Their most recent computer crash?
• The last virus that ripped through their computer?
• The new Windows Vista operating system that they have no need to go out and buy an upgrade for?
• Microsoft search?

It seems that Microsoft would like you to think of search when you think of Microsoft but first maybe Microsoft should think of search when Microsoft thinks of Microsoft.

What is Microsoft search?

• Is is MSN.com? - well there is certainly a lot more than search at MSN.com  IT should be pretty clear that the “portal approach” doesn’t work to well.  RIP Alta Vista & Yahoo!, well they aren’t exactly stealing marketshare from Google these days.
• Is it Live.com? - There is a search box there and maybe some people use it and the search results are ok but it doesn’t seem like many people use it.
• How about other MSN properties like MSN Money? - Well, when you go there, it steals the focus of your cursor and puts it in the stock quote search box.  How annoying, when I want to search I’ll determine when and where and I don’t want Microsoft to get in the way!

Look at the Microsoft Money forums. What kind of technology platform do they have that running on? There is tons of great content that search engines would eat up, good posters and moderators but it is so sloooooooooooooow to load and I probably built to keep search engines out.

So anyway, since it seems MSFT is having a hard time getting their own house in order, acquisitions may be their saving grace.  Right now Microsoft search, MSN, Live.com, whatever it is that is the Microsoft search offering has such a small amount of traffic that it does not command much attention from advertisers.  An acquisition like DoubleClick would have at least helped Microsoft get in the online advertising game, given them some data to play with and some relationships.  It would take a herculean effort to build something like DoubleClick from scratch today.

An Internet (or world) where one company is the gateway to the worlds information is no good for anyone, except maybe if you work at Google. 

If you are a web property, if you are a media company that has worked with DoubleClick, maybe you should take a step back and think.  Think about all the data that Google now has access to about your company.  Should you continue to work with DoubleClick.  You have to work with Google since they are the default search provider for such a large percentage of the population but there are other options for managing your paid search & media programs.  Maybe it’s time to start thinking about them.

Along with all of the technologies and data that come with DoubleClick, Google gets the Performics company that offers search and affiliate marketing services.  This gives Google more conversion data and insight into affiliate marketing. 

Hopefully Microsoft can get focused, can start to realize the value of assets in the online world.  They need to change their perspective and realize they can’t continue to do business the same way anymore.  Here’s hoping they can succeed.  Someone needs to give Google a run for the money but maybe it will have to be an unknown startup. 

• Do you want free Subaru service and free Subaru parts?
• Do you spend at least $3,333.00 per year on a credit card?

If you answered yes to both of these questions then you are in luck!  When you get the Subaru MasterCard from Chase Bank, you get 3% of your purchases back in the form of “Subaru Bucks” which can be used for Subaru parts, accessories and service at a Subaru dealer. 

Every time your rewards balance reaches $100, you get a Subaru Buck good for $100 towards almost anything Subaru from Subaru.  The card has a limit of $500.00 in rewards per year so if you are a big spender and spend more than $16,666.67 per year on your credit card you will want to have a second rewards card that you can continue to accumulate rewards on. 

One way to get around the annual limit on the Subaru rewards card is to simply get more than one Subaru Rewards card. Each of the $100 Subaru Bucks coupons is good for 5 years so between a trade in and as much as $2,500 in coupons per card over the course of 5 years, you could fairly easily get a free Subaru when you go to trade yours in for a new one if you get multiple cards.  The dealer may or may not go for something like this but in any case you can get up to $2,500 off your new Subaru “playing by the rules” with just one card.

As with any credit card, make sure you pay off the balance in full each and every month.  If you don’t you’ll pay the typical credit card interest charges which add up to a ton of cash and will be far in excess of any rewards you will get for using the credit card.

If you don’t have a Subaru, there are other great rewards credit cards including the MBNA (now Bank of America) World Points credit card and the Fidelity World Points card which is an even better deal if you have a Fidelity investment account.

I figured it’s time to start experimenting with a blog.  This will be a rather random collection of stuff for now, search, affiliate, skiing, sailing, shopping, who knows what else.  Stay tuned and watch it evolve.