What I Didn’t Learn At School

I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not. But I wanted to let everyone know about it incase you still haven’t heard about the new game rules that are shaking the Internet Marketing world as we know it today. I’m talking about Government Organization and how you should be focusing on the three little letters F. T. C.
The FTC, Federal Trade Commission in USA has made some major changes and you better pay close attention to them!

So what’s this all about?
Well the FTC have created some new regulations that affect all marketers. Online or ofline and yes, they affect you even if you don’t live in the USA.

If this is totally new for you I’ll recommend that you start reading it here:
FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

Let’s break it down
The two biggest changes or new guidelines has to do with Endorsements and disclosure, and Testimonials. This will change the Affiliate Marketing industry a lot.

If you promote an affiliate product, even if it’s something you give away for free and is not getting paid for, you mus be fully disclosed or you will get hit in the face for misleading adverting. That means you can no longer hide an affiliate link on your site or on an email without telling your visitors that if they signup you will get paid when they buy the product. Even if you are just promoting a free download of an e-book, if the marketer is offering something on the back end that you will earn money on you still need to tell your visitor. If not, it’s misleading advertising.

Even more important is the guideline for using testimonials.  And I’m very sure that this one will totally change the game. It’s not enough to write on your product page that “results are not typical”. You know, the normal disclaimer. If you are selling a product now you need to let your buyers know what the average buyer will achieve!

I’m very sorry for my language here but.. WTF?

This will destroy many niches and markets. It’s nearly impossible to tell. Training, diet and making money online. It all depends on people taking action or not. If you just control your “inner whiner” that always tell you that you can’t do it and listen to your “inner winner” you will succeed.  But you see, I cant write that as an average on any product.

Looking forward to some smart marketer that comes up with a “creative” way to get around this new guidelines.

So what to do?
Follow the new guidelines! Be honest with people. Tell them if they find the product interesting you will earn a commission. I’m very sure that you will still be able to sell infoproducts without testimonials.

Finalwords
You should really read the FTC brief yourself. I’ll link it up here again. I’m not an attorney you need to seek your own legal counsel on what to do. This is just information on what’s happening in the marketing world and I thought you should know.

If it’s good or bad for the Internet Marketing industry, I guess time will show. Let me know what you think in the comments.