FTC To Monitor Blogs – Another Swipe At Affiliates?
Something of interest to all of us who blog and potentially the wider affiliate marketing community was raised in the Wealthy Affilate forum today.
It’s a pretty complex issue and we’ve already touched upon it on this blog post.
Without repeating it all at length here, there are a couple of articles you might want to look at as well as the FTC draft regulations themselves.
From Yahoo Tech:-
FTC plans to monitor blogs for claims, payments
From cnet News:-
FTC to go after blogger freebies
And the draft FTC Regulations themselves can be found here:-
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/11/P034520endorsementguides.pdf
The one difference we see in all the examples the FTC give is when a merchant approaches a site owner and gives them perks to write about something. The way most affiliates approach it is WE pick out the products to promote….so we’re still being selective and trying to pick out the best products for the reader. Even though we get paid, we’re not writing it simply because a merchant approached us and asked us to make a blog post or write a review in exchange for a gift or freebie.
It’s possible though, that we may require a disclaimer on a privacy or terms page making full disclosure that we get compensated for purchases through our links.
It’s likely this one will rumble on for some time so we’ll be keeping an eye on it. Feel free to add your views and comments.
In the meantime I’ll just add that if you decide to join Wealthy Affilate via any of our links on this blog we do indeed receive a commission but I’d also point out that you can’t join through your ‘own’ link anyway and that you won’t get our great bonuses unless you use our links!
(Do you think that’s the kind of disclosure they have in mind?) 
Related posts:
Tagged with: affiliate marketing • blogging • blogs • ftc • ftc monitor blogs • ftc regs • ftc regs blogs • ftc regulations • ftc regulations blogs • internet marketing
Filed under: Blog Posts
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say
that I have really enjoyed reading your posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you write again soon!
I’m not too worried about this. We deal with these kinds of things all the time and we get through them. Think about all the Adwords slaps and the Squidoo thing.
I do think that the word should be spread around though so kudos on making the post. People don’t really approach me to review their stuff but I’m thinking even though we do pick our stuff and I’m not talking about your or me in particular but affiliates who pick stuff just because it pays 75%, you know, so they give a favourable review? I think thats the kinda thing the FTC is trying to crack down on.
Oh and how about those Google Money scam fake blogs, they’re the worst and its because they’re marketing the CPA type deals where they get paid per lead. I don’t think there’s a difference between anyone approaching you to review their stuff and you choosing a to give a product a favourable review just because it pays $10 CPA.
Yeah, I agree Jay… we jump these hoops all the time.
Bottom line, the main thing seems to us to just give good disclosure, don’t lie or make false claims, and don’t f*%$ people over…anyone with that philosophy should be perfectly fine.
And yeah promoting something just because it pays well is no different to getting a freebie really.
We often get approached to promote other products and services in niches we are in (non IM) but have only ever once changed our tack because they were providing a better service.
In the IM niche, we get stuff sent all the time. How often do you see us push it? Not very often, right?
The only tiny gap, I can see at the moment in our IM arsenal is something on Twitter. And there’s so much crap around on that, that we’ll end up doing our own. More on that later in the month maybe…
(It will be a freebie as well.)