New FTC Disclosure Rules
You can imagine my pleasant surprise this morning when I read @shoemoney’s tweet about new FTC disclosure rules. Here’s his take on the updated regulations.
There is the chance for some gray area (from what I can tell) – but it seems like the focus is on bloggers endorsing products “in post” – so I’m going to guess that items that are clearly ad units are exempt from this. Most everything I have out there is labeled “Advertisement” anyway. This leaves me with some products I’ve recommended on this site.
I have never accepted products or money to make a post on any of my current sites. However, in an effort to maximize revenue, I have established affiliate relationships with products I’d recommend anyway. While the ads/offers on my other sites should be pretty clear cut as to their nature – things here are a bit different. I make recommendations to readers of this blog (both of you), and my 7xo Academy members. I have been up front that the products I recommend offer me a commission of anything I might sell (nada so far, for what it’s worth).
My take on recommending affiliate products in the online marketing realm is simple – I have to use them, and they have to work. I have been plugging all these things for a while – and finally decided to try and make some latte money off it if folks decide to purchase because of me.
This lead me to update the “About Us” with a disclosure of marketing relationships – and I’ll be careful going forward to make sure that I disclose any sort of affiliate relationship on a blog post (that isn’t a clear advertisement – like the Thesis Theme ad blocks).
On my other sites – ads stay labeled pretty clearly. I feel that more than a legal issue, it’s also the right thing to do – although now that I think about it – I’ll probably go back and make sure that is clear as well, because I am paranoid.
Besides some minor annoyance in having to take the time to do this – I’m ok with the ruling. I’m hoping this slaps some of the “big dogs” that peddle their snake oil internet money making schemes, and slaps them hard. I can thing of a couple guys out there right now that I’d love to see shut down (I’m looking at you, Fats) -both because they are scamming good (if not overly committed to due diligence) people out of hard earned money. They are also clogging up marketing channels for guys like me, that might make a few bucks off recommending stuff like ShoeMoney Tools – which is really high quality stuff.
(in case you’re completely oblivious, the link above is an affiliate link, and on the less than 1% chance you click it and make a purchase, Jeremy will send me some monies)