Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is ending the Amazon Associates program in Illinois. This is because Illinois governor Pat Quinn sign a bill into law on Thursday that requires Amazon and Internet retailers that uses affiliate programs in the state to pay a 6.25% sales tax. This actually affected Roger Ebert too. Roger Ebert used Twitter to promote products through an Amazon.com Associates link and made some money out of it. Amazon Associates will be shut down on April 15th. [paidContent]

Film critic Roger Ebert from Twitter and Amazon.com. He has about 350,000 followers on Twitter. A few times per day, he tweets about products on Amazon.com with an Amazon Affiliate link in them. Ebert makes about 7% cut from each person that buys a product after following that Amazon Affiliate link. Ebert said he is not interested in making money through sponsored tweets. “No tweet of mine is or ever has been ‘spnsored’ or paid. Every tweet is my own doing. I will never, ever, have a sponsored Twitter account. … I write every single word on my Twitter account, and everything else under my name.” [Poynter]