New FTC Guidelines For Internet Marketers And Affiliate Marketers.

New FTC Guidelines For Internet Marketers And Affiliate Marketers.

October 16th, 2009 @ MsMedia // One Comment

Recently the FTC or Federal Trade Commission in the United States announced new guidelines that will directly affect many Internet Marketers, starting on Dec 1st 2009.

Up until now, if you’ve been marketing online, and you received a testimonial from one of your customers, and that testimonial said something like, “I made $5,000 in one week using this product”. You could turn around and use that testimonial however you want it in your marketing, provided you include a little disclaimer stating that…”These results aren’t typical and results may vary”.

In fact you could pretty much do the same thing to show proof of your own results for your own product. But with the new FTC rule we can’t exactly do this.

The new rules are clamping down on expectations. Assuming that any testimonial or endorsement that comes in is truthful, then we have to start playing with the new rules. The new rules break down into a couple of different things.

1. Generally Expected Performance:

You can put those testimonials on your website with “results not typical”. But it can be interpreted as “Generally Expected Performance” unless you share a testimonial that is generally shared performances. If the results are Generally Expected Performance, you are fine, you don’t have to change anything. But if that for some reason is not generally expected, then you have to share what “generally expected is”. That’s a big issue with it because a lot of people have not invested the time and energy in figuring out what IS the generally expected performance.

You need to start doing the research and find out what generally expected performance is. You cannot put that testimonial up there if you don’t know. If you don’t know what the generally expected results are, then you cannot put that testimonial up there, because it would be considered as deceptive.

You should NOT take my word for it, you should go directly to the FTC website and get the information.

2. The new FTC rule also affect marketers who are promoting products as an affiliate.

Normally you could write a review of your experience with an affiliate product and link it to your affiliate website. Now, you cannot do this anymore.

If you are an affiliate and you are making 30% of anything you endorse, you have to disclose that you are profiting or gaining from the review.

You must disclose that, ‘the above link is an affiliate link, and I do receive compensation for the sales of the product’.

Things you can do to comply:

1. Be truthful
2. Either know or share the generally expected performance.
3. Make sure that you disclose any of the sponsored connections.

This essentially will mean that we are moving from truthful advertising to transparent advertising. Good or bad? You decide.

Abe

P.S. Please consult with the FTC website or an attorney. This is just my interpretation of this new guideline.

Category : Social Networking