FTC and Blogging

I just read an article on Zac Johnson’s site about the FTC and their decision to regulate blogging.  His reference was Fox News, and then low and behold while walking past the front desk at my office I see on the front page of the Wall Street Journal an article about the subject.  Now considering I already read Zac’s post and got the jist of things enough to not click through to the Fox site, having that article sitting right in front of me in print was a little hard to pass up, so I read it.

I wanted to link to the WSJ article, but spent a full 3 minutes looking for it and came up with bupkiss.  I did however see the headline on a video and they are nice enough to put the little embed code right there, so I did. 

 The jist of the article is that the FTC wants bloggers to disclose when they get paid to write a review, disclose any free products they have received, etc. 

First of all, this is kind of a no-brainer for both bloggers and consumers.  It is a pretty much established standard in any review type of proposition that you simply disclose that you were paid or got free stuff.  Read most CNET reviews or articles and you will see the disclaimer down in the about the author at the end of each post.  That is nothing new and most bloggers on the up and up have already been following that type of policy.

Second – HELLLO, Consumers, the decision to make a purchase is entirely up to you.  If you come across an ad, then the site that has that ad is most likely getting paid to have it there.  If you come across a review of a product on a blog and there are links directing you where to purchase you can pretty much bet that the site is getting a affiliate commission from sending consumers.  If you see the opening sentence of an article stating “So and So just sent me a free laptop so I could test out their software” you should take their review with a grain of salt.  Most of the reviews I saw about the free laptop also included that after testing the software they were going to donate the laptop – thus keeping to their code of ethics and trying not to taint the review.

The articles seem to make it look like the FTC is really going after the fake blogs (flogs) but bulk of people doing flogs aren’t going to be deterred by a FTC guideline.  They are going to have to face real consequences in order to change their ways.

The real questions about these guidelines are these:

1.  For those bloggers that actually purchased a product, reviewed it, and placed a affiliate link (thus getting paid if readers follow & buy) – how does the new regulations effect that?  Would we need to put a disclaimer at the bottom of the post saying – If you click the link and purchase I get a affiliate commission.  If one were to do that, then the disclaimer itself might break the affiliate agreement (some agreements have rules about telling people to click on the links).  I suppose a simple disclaimer like:  This site participates in affiliate marketing, and many times links to products reviewed are affiliate links.  Might work.  – who knows.

2.  What about advertisement type posts w/ affiliate links?

3.  In theory all old posts would be grandfathered in, but who knows – if those old posts have search engine rankings and are still generating hits, would one have to go back and edit all their previous posts to input the disclaimer?

I did scan the Fox report and it seemed to explain things a little better than the WSJ article.  Just too many questions. 

On a separate note:

I tried to Retweet Zac’s post by clicking on his handy retweet button, and Twitter kept telling me my un/pw was incorrect.  Now my computer has saved the un/pw so I haven’t actually had to type it in for a long time.  I tried several variations but had no success.  Then I did the “forgot password” route and reset my pw.  After about 1/2 and hour I went to refresh the page and it had logged me out and again told me my un/pw was incorrect.  I just reset the thing so I know it is correct – what the heck?!  Arg – frustrating.

Johnny Optimist
The other 1/2 is full of opportunity!

This site participates in affiliate marketing, and many times links to products reviewed are affiliate links.