At the AffSpot Affiliate Forum I get alot of Private Messages… A whole lot of PMs. And a trend I’ve seen of late is the number of questions I get about the FTC Guidelines for Affiliate Marketing (or blogs, tweets, etc.). I also was watching the SXSW session about this very same thing (by following the tweets of someone from the FTC at the event along with some liveblogs). So rather than answering a pile of PM’s, here’s the info as I understand it.
If you get paid, you have to declare it. Not on a global “disclaimer” page, on every article, post, etc. If you get a free sample, discount, demo product, commission, etc. You’ve got to declare it. Now, you can be creative in declaring it. But you have to declare it. It’s that simple. Doing anything less is asking for trouble.
Here’s a few other points I gathered and put into a simple “bullet point” format for you.
- If you mention that you like the Google NexusOne it’s okay. You don’t have to declare anything if your just giving your opinion. But if Google gave you one, you got a discount for blogging about it.. Receive a commission for every one sold? Then declare it.
- What the FTC is looking for is transparency. If your getting money, discounts, free product, etc. Just say so.
- You can be creative in your disclosure. It doesn’t have to be a boxed “sterile” legalistic disclaimer. As long as your site visitors will discern that you got money/products/services/discount, etc. then your good.
- You must disclose somewhere in the actual post/article/tweet/status update. It is not enough to post a blanket disclosure in the About section or sidebar of your site. The same applies to tweets. You must disclose in each tweet (but #add #spon is okay).
Here is the FTC disclosure page with revised guides and consumer education videos
And here is the WOMMA guide to disclosure
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