Overview Of New FTC Marketing Regulations Effective 12/01/09

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has made some changes that will definitely affect anyone who markets any type of product or service on the internet. Failure to comply with these changes could cost you more money than the average person could ever afford, so it’s important to ensure that you’re complying with these new guidelines!

Who This Applies To

Essentially, if you market or sell any type of product or service this could affect you. This is especially true if you market a product or service on the Internet, Radio, TV, Newspapers, or any other medium which is viewed by the general public. This includes Business Owners, Sales People, Internet Marketers, Network Marketers, and Affiliate Marketers.

Overview Of New FTC Regulations

A lot of business people have been freaking out about these new regulations and some have very good reason for this. The average business person or marketer may find that they have a few adjustments to make, however this shouldn’t have a tremendous affect on the way you currently do business or on your sales.

Please keep in mind that I am not a Lawyer, and I am not offering any legal advice. If you are worried about these new regulations in any way I would encourage you to do your own research and consult an attorney.

That said, after doing some extensive research on this matter myself, I have came to the following conclusions. The FTC does not want businesses or marketers to mislead the general public in any way. They want everyone to conduct business with 100% clear transparency. This is being done to protect all consumers across the board.

How The New FTC Regulations Apply

When you are marketing a product the FTC wants you to be clear in disclosing the fact that you are an affiliate for that product, or that you have some sort of vested interest in it being sold. For instance if you have a blog and you make a post about a particular product and then have a link leading to the sales page or a squeeze page and you will make a commission if that product or service is purchased, the FTC wants you to make your readers aware of this.

This should be done in a manner which is easy to see, and not hidden or disguised in any way. Preferably they would like you to place the words “Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate” Right next to or right below the link. This is so there is no doubt in the readers mind that your opinion or view of this product or service may be skewed by the fact that you are trying to sell that product or service, and that you will make money from it in some way if they do purchase it.

This is especially true if you have some sort of a review site in which you are somehow being paid for or compensated in any way, for the review of that product or service, or if you are going to make a commission from the sale of that product or service. They do not want you to even slightly, miss lead your readers in this regard.

Testimonials

This may be the area most affected by these new changes. In the past it was acceptable for you to have a customer or business associate give a detailed example of their results from using a product or service. This is what is called social proof. In the past, if the results they obtained were better than the calculated average, you could simply state, “Results Are Not Typical”, or something to that affect. This is no longer the case. And this is where I see the biggest change in these regulations. The FTC sees this as being misleading and they do not want this type of testimonial being used anymore!

More Official Information

If any of these things seem like they might apply to you then I highly encourage you to do some research into these matters on your own. Jim Edwards has conducted an interview with Mr. Cleland of the FTC and they tried to answer the most important questions and aspects of these newly enforced regulations that are effective as of 12/01/2009.

You can listen to the entire interview for free on his website and even get a free download of the PDF for the interview if you’d like. It is a bit lengthy, but in my opinion, it is a must for anyone doing business online. There is no optin required, so do yourself a favor and set aside some uninterrupted time where you can listen to the whole interview and take notes as you go along ! It’s that important! You can find this interview at:

http://www.igottatellyou.com/blog/ftc-change-interview/

To Your Continued Success!