Bloggers! Stay Ahead of New FTC Laws on Affiliate Marketing
The FTC are starting to implement new laws restricting how bloggers promote affiliate products and most of us will need to modify how we present our promotions – or we’ll find ourselves in trouble.
If you’ve been on the web for any length of time you’ll be aware of the rubbish ‘reviews’ written by many affiliates trying to make money by promoting products. Even if you have been writing honest reviews you will still need to make a few tweaks to your pages to make sure you stay within the FTC’s guidlines.
In a nutshell, the FTC say that all reviews that contain your affiliate link to a product must state this clearly and visibly so that the reader knows you will be paid a fee if they buy the product through your link.
This doesn’t have to be all negative though and to really understand how to go about implementing the new laws successfully I strongly recommend that you go now and read Mark Ling’s excellent blog post where he explains everything clearly and also suggests how to go modify your reviews so that you have no loss in your profits…
Here’s the link to FTC plans to regulate bloggers, but what does it mean for me?!
…and this : http://www.affilorama.com/blog/honesty-may-be-the-best-policy
Happy blogging and continued profits!
Tags:affiliate marketing,blogging,ftc laws,mark ling
Hi! It was great skyping with you today.
I personally think this regulation is a load of BS. I hate regulation generally – i just think that it starts with the best of intentions but snowballs quite quickly. Generally though i think that the market takes care of it – if people demand disclosure, affiliates will start to disclose…
However, what is the point? it doesn’t change the price that product creators will sell it for, so who cares? Would love to hear your thoughts!
~tammy
Hello Tammy,
I hate regulations too. However, I think this regulation is a good one and necessary for the future of affiliate marketing. If Google hadn’t clamped down on spammy websites cluttering up the search engines, in the end people would have stopped using search engines – and so it is with affiliate review sites which is one of the major ways of promoting products online. Most of the so-called review sites are not really honest reviews …the ‘my top pic’ is nearly always the one with the biggest affiliate payout!
If it isn’t regulated in some way, a year or so down the line all review sites will be totally ignored by web visitors. I don’t know how effective this regulation will be but at least it’s a step in the right direction:)
By the way, for anyone interested in collectibles, your site is great
