Disclosure

Starting December 1st, 2009 the FTC has mandated that bloggers are to follow the same disclosure rules as most traditional media (newspapers, radio, etc).  In a nutshell, if you make money from a link, received compensation (free stuff or cash) for a review/testimonial/etc or are connected to the product/service you’re endorsing then you need to reveal that info.

The blogosphere (I feel weird saying that) has voiced many opinions regarding this change.  Personally, I could give a crap about the FTC, but their $11,000 dollar fines have my attention.  What I love is how this change is helping feed the misconception that people are making TONS of money through their blogs.  I haven’t made a red cent and I’ll venture to guess its the same for 98% of the blogs out there.  That’s not for lack of trying, but unless you’re really good at hawking your wares or have a big enough readership, the ROI will be meager at best.

Having said that, I too am joining in on the futility.  It’s minor in scope and none of the Adwords crap. Here’s what I got so far.

• Amazon links – Having been on the Internet as long as I have, my standard assumption is that ANY link to Amazon is an affiliate link.  Why would it be otherwise?  So just to be clear every single one of my links to Amazon are affiliate links.
• Thesis – WordPress is the super awesome platform I run my blog on and Thesis is the ninja-like theme I use.  I liked it so much I signed up for their program, so if you see a graphic or a link that points to Thesis *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* it’ll be an affiliate link.
• Lateral Action – This is one of my favorite sites and from time to time they offer great online courses.  When I write about these courses I always mention that the links are affiliate at the end of my post.  Not all Lateral Action links are affiliate, but the ones that are have clear labels.
• Blog Post Engineering – Following in the trend of only recommending what I myself use, Website in a Weekend’s fantastic e-book “Blog Post Engineering” has helped me craft better posts while showing me how to leverage the powerful internal workings of WordPress.  Even the minor changes I’ve made to my posting process have shown great results.

If I decide to sign up for anything else, this post will be updated to reflect that (there’s a direct link to it in my footer).  Also, if I put any reviews on my site that stemmed from free goods, I’ll make those association clear.  I think that covers all the bases.  If I missed anything, feel free to call me on it and I’ll square things away ASAP.

This post was inspired by Kelly Diels of Cleavage

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