New FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rules come into effect on 1 December 2009 governing advertising disclosures that affect bloggers, affiliates, publishers and anyone that benefits from endorsing a product online. The FTC can investigate and impose fines of up to $11,000. While this has certainly got many affiliates and online marketers up in arms, in my opinion it is a step in the right direction.
So how to you protect yourself and ensure that you are FTC compliant? For most of us, moving forward with FTC compliance is not really that difficult. The difficulty lies in updating any existing websites that you may have.
- If you are endorsing a product, ensure that you are a bona fide user of that product (i.e you have actually used the product, whether bought or supplied for review). If you haven’t used the product, make it clear to your readers.
- Make it clear too that you are an affiliate, and that you will benefit from your recommendations (for example, disclose that you get paid a commission on every sale made on the site that you are referring them to). Do this clearly and conspicuously – don’t try and conceal your connection! In my opinion, the user doesn’t actually care and in fact will trust you more if you disclose this to them.
- If you’re displaying a banner ad, there’s no need to disclose this as it should be obvious to the user.
- Don’t use testimonials, unless you can actually prove that they are real. If results aren’t typical, you won’t get away with putting “results not typical, your results may vary” as the disclaimer – you have to actually say “typical results are …” and give an exact figure that you can actually prove! Problem testimonials are those that contain:
- any time frame based statements, such as “lose 10 pounds in 30 days”
- any statements that can vary between individuals
If you’re simply using testimonials that say that your customers like your product and are happy with their purchase then sure, no problem. If the product is good enough, and you’re adding enough value before the sale, you shouldn’t need testimonials anyway.
- As suggested by Mark Ling, if linking to an affiliate product, put your disclaimer directly after the link. For example:
Click Here for the Best Solution
The above link is a sponsored advertisement for **product**. The owner of this website is not a bona fide user of the product being recommended.
So how do you show a disclaimer for a medium such as Facebook or Twitter, where posts are limited to 140 chars or less? Tut, tut – you shouldn’t really be direct linking to an affiliate product through a social network anyway, but that’s besides the point. Keep an eye on this website for an interesting and innovative approach: http://cmp.ly. It’s in beta stage, and it will be interesting to see how it evolves, but this simple approach may be the answer.
More Links:
The FTC’s official memo (see the PDFs in their right sidebar)
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
The Wall St. Journal’s summary of the issues
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125475547130664753.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.