I’ve posted recently on the question of whether affiliate links should be disclosed by bloggers, but it seems that the point may now be mooted by a recent opinion from the FTC. Brian from CopyBlogger addresses the entire issue in his usual clear and direct style in this post: Affiliate Marketing Disclosure Now Required By Law?
I still have the survey up in the right hand sidebar as of this posting, but I’m not sure how much longer it makes sense to run it. I don’t think the issue is completely decided yet, but the interpretation of Brian, who is an attorney who has gone up against the FTC before, and other attorneys posting in the comments section, is that some sort of disclosure is now called for by regulatory law.
As the news gets out and we get a clearer picture of how this will affect affiliate marketers, we’ll get ideas about how to comply with the new interpretation of the regulations. It may be as simple as having a new disclosure policy page that informs readers that links may be affiliate links, or the consensus may be that each and every affiliate link must be marked as such. We’ll find out more soon, I hope. For now, it may be wise to begin disclosing these links in some way.
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