Bloggers! How will the recent FTC guidelines affect you

As you may of heard the FTC has released some new guidelines which will affect all affiliates working online. We got many questions about this recent change so we decided to give you all the facts and answer all your questions in this newsletter. What's the short version of what the FTC changes are? ----------------------------------------------------- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission released their new guidelines on 10/05/2009. You'll find the complete guidelines at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm. It's a long read, so let's see if we can summarize the main points for you quickly: 1) If you have a relationship with someone whose product you're endorsing (which also means promoting), you must disclose that relationship. That means you have to say explicitly if you got a free copy of the product and/or any payment for your endorsement. 2) If you use testimonials to sell a product (yours or someone else's), you can't use testimonials that give specific results without also telling readers/viewers what the typical results are. They'll fine you $11,000 per violation. There are more details in the guidelines, which we strongly recommend that you read, but those are the key points. And by the way, we're not lawyers, so by all means get true legal advice from a lawyer as you're figuring out how you'll respond to the new regulations. Frankly, some parts of the new guidelines are vague. The FTC says they did that somewhat on purpose, and they'll handle things on a case by case basis. That makes it more difficult to know how to comply in certain situations, because it's hard to figure out how the guidelines apply, but that's the way it is. That means there are plenty of unresolved questions, too...and we won't know the answers until the FTC starts enforcing the regulations. The FTC has said that the guidelines are really meant to clarify things for bloggers and for corporations, but it's easy to see how they could go after just about any marketer due to the vague language. When do the new rules take effect? ---------------------------------- They go into effect on December 01, 2009. They were approved by a unanimous vote (4-0), so there's no chance they won't go into effect on the scheduled date. This is just something we'll all have to live with, whether we like it or not. What about for marketers with businesses outside the U.S.? ---------------------------------------------------------- If you're outside the U.S. and you're not selling to people inside the U.S., you're not affected at all. But really, how many web businesses never sell to people in the U.S.? Not many. It's safer to assume that folks in the States will buy your stuff, and that you should follow the FTC guidelines. What does this mean for testimonials on a sales page? ----------------------------------------------------- We know you've seen testimonials on sales pages that say things like, "I made $14,576 in 20 minutes with just the tip on page 12!!!" Those are likely to disappear. It used to be perfectly acceptable to cherry-pick great results like that and cover yourself with a simple disclaimer like this: "These results aren't typical." Not anymore. The guidelines say, "advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect." That means if you're going to mention specific results in testimonials, you have to tell people what the typical results are. We all know what the typical results are for most information products... people buy them and do nothing with them. That means it's nearly impossible for you to quantify a "typical" result. If you don't know what results at least a statistically significant sample of buyers got, you can say what's typical! All of that means (get ready for it) you simply can't use results-based testimonials. Period. Unless you want to risk an $11,000 fine each time you get caught. You can still use testimonials where people say they love your product, or like you a lot, or generally think you're swell. Those tend not to be powerful selling tools, but they pass muster. But that's not all the guidelines mean. You also have to disclose if your friends wrote your testimonials. Again, will you get caught if you don't? Probably not, but it's a risk. Honesty is the best way not to get in trouble. The best advice is not to depend on testimonials to sell your product. Make your offer good enough to sell on its own. In a way, this is bad for new marketers, because it can be tough to come up with a good offer. But it's also good, because you don't have to worry as much about getting testimonials! What does this mean for affiliate marketing? -------------------------------------------- It's actually simpler for affiliates than for product sellers. If you're an affiliate, you have to disclose that you're getting paid when people buy through your affiliate link. Yes, that means you need to tell people that your ClickBank link is indeed a ClickBank link, even if you've made it prettier by saying "yoursite dot com/productx" or whatever. There are two ways to do this. The first way is to include a general statement on your site (maybe in your privacy policy), something like this: "Links on this site for product reviews are affiliate links. I get paid a commission when you buy a product after clicking on one of those links." The second way is to be explicit about each link. You might say something like, "I get paid a commission when you buy through this link." Do both approaches cover you legally? Hard to say, and the FTC hasn't cleared that up yet. So do whichever one you think is safer. Finally, as an affiliate be VERY careful about using the promotional email templates product sellers give you. Those emails often contain claims about results, and the new FTC guidelines frown on that unless you tell people what the typical results are. The new FTC guidelines don't specifically talk about email marketing, but odds are good this will be considered covered as well (hey, it's selling). So when in doubt, leave it out. So what should I do? -------------------- First and foremost, you'll want to get some genuine legal advice, especially if you have a big site and/or a large mailing list. Don't just take our word for this stuff. If you're an affiliate marketer, get busy adding disclosures to the sites you use to promote products. That includes blogs and review pages/sites. At a minimum: 1) Add a general disclosure to your site saying that your promotional links are affiliate links, and that you get paid when people buy through those links 2) If you offer an free items (front-end sign-up enticements or bonuses), make sure you tell people that any affiliate links in those items are getting you paid Beyond that, it's up to you. When in doubt, disclose more information than you think you need to. It doesn't pay to get on the wrong side of the FTC. If you're a product marketer, you'll probably have more work to do. Here's a very brief (and probably incomplete) checklist: 1) Start scrubbing your results-based testimonials from your sales pages. If you actually CAN quantify typical/average results, go ahead and do that, but most people won't be able to. In fact, during the comment period on the rules, some folks brought that up with the FTC, specifically for weight loss products...and the FTC promptly ignored it. 2) Modify your affiliate email templates (and other things, like solo ads) to remove any results claims. 3) Contact your affiliates to tell them you did that, and to give them new stuff they can use instead. 4) Scrub your products of any results claims as well, unless they're your personal results and you include ALL of your results (results for every single trial of your free traffic strategy, for example). 5) If you use any testimonials from people you gave a free copy of your product to, say so. Bottom line, disclose, disclose, disclose. Did we mention disclose? In the end, these new guidelines aren't the death of Internet marketing, or of affiliate marketing. And if you sell a product on the web, you aren't out of business. That said, if you don't want to risk racking up some eye-popping fines, please take some reasonable steps to comply with the new guidelines as soon as you can... and as completely as you can, given that they're a little vague at the moment. We all have to make changes, unless we just got lucky and were completely untouched by the new guidelines. That's probably rare. So make the changes you need to make and get used to the new world. And look on the bright side. The new guidelines are going to make it harder for people to sell with hype and false promises. Those kind of fraudulent sellers hurt everybody by giving Internet marketing a bad name. Listen to my news Podcast http://RonMills.us/news Visit My Social Media Blog http://ronmills.us/ Visit me on twitter http://Twitter.com/RainbowUSA Visit Me On Face Book  http://RonMills.us/facebook My Biz on Twitter http://Twitter.com/theRbuzz