transparency Meet the FTC disclosure requirement in under a minuteWhen the FTC announced that bloggers must disclose compensation in early October, there were rumblings of how it would affect us. In fact, there was so much confusion and bad information out there, I wrote an article on the biggest myths of FTC disclosure in mid-November. Turns out that those are two of my more popular articles in the last three months!

So December 1, 2009, the date of the required disclosure if you are being compensated in any form, has come and gone. No one notably was arrested, no big news on fines, no major sites were shut down. The whole thing just fizzled out. Does that mean you don’t need a disclosure statement? Of course not! You’ll still need one if you plan on making any money moving forward.

Even if you are not currently earning income, you should still disclose

As I highlighted in the disclosure myths article, the reality is that 99% of bloggers could probably get away with not changing a thing since the FTC isn’t really coming after them.

However, if it only takes a few minutes to do it, why even chance it? Feel free to read the entire FTC endorsement guide if you want a sleeping aide but if you want the short version, just safely disclose by doing one of the following methods.


How to safely disclose

After spending many years working with various government regulators, I’d like to think I know what’s needed here. In my professional opinion, you have two solid options, both of which should take you very little time:

1. Create a FTC disclosure page and provide a link to it every single time you review or pitch a product or service.

2. Write a small paragraph that discloses how you are being compensated at the end of each article that needs it.

I chose to do the first option. In addition, I also added a disclosure link on my footer in the event someone needs to find it quickly (and I really don’t want it in part of my main nav). Feel free to take the verbiage from my disclosure page, make any minor tweaks if necessary and apply it to your site.

So tell me, how are you disclosing on your blog?

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