In early October, the FTC made a big announcement regarding endorsements. Basically, starting December 1, 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will require bloggers to disclose payments from companies for reviewing their products. You can read the entire new FTC endorsement guide if you want but for most bloggers, a “how does that affect me” recap would suffice.

So let’s clear up the biggest myths about the new FTC endorsement guide:

You can get fined $11,000 for a disclosure violation.

False. The $11,000 was wrongly reported by many blogs since it’s the amount people had to pay when the FTC charged them of deceptive advertising and then they continued to violate the federal court order. Besides that number is actually $16,000 today. Regardless, neither amount really applies. These guidelines do not have a monetary penalty since the FTC does not have the authority to impose a fine. You would have to continually ignore FTC warnings to a point where a proceeding occurs with a federal court, which would then impose a fine.

The FTC is going after bloggers.

False. The FTC is actually going after the advertiser, not the endorser (blogger). The FTC has no intention of filing any cases for endorsers. In fact, they have never opened a case against an endorser nor have they opened a case against someone for disclosure violations only.

The FTC looks at every blogger the same way.

False. If a blogger fails to disclose compensation, regardless of whether it was a payment, product, or service, and also misrepresents the product he is endorsing, that’s a violation. The FTC will likely first go after those that are related to health claims. So even if a blogger doesn’t disclose about a health product, he would still pretty much have to lie about the results to make it on the FTC radar. And even then, the FTC would bring the case to the advertiser, not the blogger. Moreover, the FTC will not look at your review of a new iPhone charger or a WP theme the same way they look at a fake drug endorsement.

What can you do to protect yourself?

Easy. First, don’t lie. If you are endorsing a product, then tell the truth about what it does or give your honest opinion. And if you are making an outrageous claim, provide supporting evidence to back it up.

Second, to be on the safe side, make it clear when you are getting compensated. So if you are writing a review article and you get to keep the product, simply state that on the post. Another option is to have a disclosure page and simply link to it any time it’s relevant.

Lastly, stay away from crazy health-related endorsements and anything illegal. For example, you cannot cure cancer with an ointment, you cannot look like pro body builder in four weeks, and you cannot enlarge your pee pee with a special drink — so don’t blog about those things. And if someone can prove me wrong, please let me know so I can start promoting those products!

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