In case you haven’t noticed, the affiliate marketing business has been under attack in multiple states by legislators that are hoping to gain more revenue for their states by slapping Internet tax on retailers in those states. Companies such as Amazon usually do not hesitate to remove affiliates who happen to be unlucky enough to live in one of those pro Internet-tax states.

That’s not the only thing PPC affiliates need to worry about. Many retailers are struggling to keep their affiliate programs profitable these days. That means they will keep changes to their commission structures on a consistent basis. Take Amazon for instance. The company has announced that it will issue commissions on Kindle e-books from now on. Great news, right? But here is the catch. Kindle e-reader commissions are now dropped to as low as 4%. So if you have built your PPC business around promoting Amazon Kindle, you may want to integrate more e-books in your plans.

Amazon increasing or decreasing its commissions is not the issue here. Smart marketers watch out for these changes and update their PPC models accordingly. You simply can’t afford to bid as high as you have in the past to get Kindle leads, if you are not getting enough compensation to offset your costs. That’s why you should have already made a model for your PPC efforts to get a good indication of how much you can spend for a lead based on the amount of commission you are getting for selling a specific product.

Microsoft Excel is your friends here. It never hurts to try worst and best case scenarios in your model to see how things would look like in each scenario. If you create a dynamic spreadsheet, you can easily change your numbers and see how things look. Being a successful PPC marketer is more than knowing what keywords to bid on. You need to get the overall revenue/expense side of things right as well. If you have not invested some time in coming up with an easy to change model for your PPC business, now is the time.