Tuesday, October 13, 2009
New FTC guidelines
Just a quick courtesy 'heads up' about this in case you have not heard already. If your online business operations extend into USA then here is a news release by US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that will likely impact you.
The News Release can be found at:- http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
There are links to documents providing examples on the right side of this page.
I have not read it in full detail yet but as an affiliate then basically it seems this is what it is about:-
"... will be interpreted as representing that the endorser’s experience is representative of what consumers will generally achieve with the advertised product in actual, albeit variable, conditions of use. Therefore, unless the advertiser possesses and relies upon adequate substantiation for this representation, the advertisement should either clearly and conspicuously disclose what the generally expected performance would be in the depicted circumstances or clearly and conspicuously disclose the limited applicability of the endorser’s experience to what consumers may generally expect to achieve."
As I said this is a legal position brought about by the US FTC and therefore I can not give any advice on this matter. If you have any questions then consult your solicitor, as any of the above comments I make are not to be considered legal advice.
Here are some more useful references where you can find out more on to this topic:-
1) Dave Kaminski from Web Video University - A 10 min audio interview with USA Lawyer Kevin Houchin in Colorado. Here is the link:
http://webvideouniversity.com/podcast/video/2009/10/16/wvu-58-the-new-ftc-rules-for-internet-marketers
2) More from Kevin Houchin about this topic on his site http://houchinlaw.com:
http://houchinlaw.com/?p=468
As always, wishing you every success for your business.
Kevin Richardson
www.biztoolz.com.au
The News Release can be found at:- http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
There are links to documents providing examples on the right side of this page.
I have not read it in full detail yet but as an affiliate then basically it seems this is what it is about:-
- You should not make income or results claims unless you have real evidence to prove this is what your consumer will generally achieve with your advertised product/service
- You have to disclose if you have received a free review copy if doing reviews
- You have to disclose when links are affiliate links and that that if they purchase you will receive an affiliate compensation.
"... will be interpreted as representing that the endorser’s experience is representative of what consumers will generally achieve with the advertised product in actual, albeit variable, conditions of use. Therefore, unless the advertiser possesses and relies upon adequate substantiation for this representation, the advertisement should either clearly and conspicuously disclose what the generally expected performance would be in the depicted circumstances or clearly and conspicuously disclose the limited applicability of the endorser’s experience to what consumers may generally expect to achieve."
As I said this is a legal position brought about by the US FTC and therefore I can not give any advice on this matter. If you have any questions then consult your solicitor, as any of the above comments I make are not to be considered legal advice.
Here are some more useful references where you can find out more on to this topic:-
1) Dave Kaminski from Web Video University - A 10 min audio interview with USA Lawyer Kevin Houchin in Colorado. Here is the link:
http://webvideouniversity.com/podcast/video/2009/10/16/wvu-58-the-new-ftc-rules-for-internet-marketers
2) More from Kevin Houchin about this topic on his site http://houchinlaw.com:
http://houchinlaw.com/?p=468
As always, wishing you every success for your business.
Kevin Richardson
www.biztoolz.com.au
Saturday, October 03, 2009
'Here's How You Can Unleash The Power Of Wordpress, To Build Your Own Profitable Online Business
Unless you have never used the internet before, then it is unlikely that you haven't heard of a blog before. Blogs have become so much part of the internet because they are easy for anyone to create and update even ifthey have no experience with graphics, HTML or in fact anything else which makes the internet part of an unknown goldmine.
The real purpose of blogs is so that people can keep a record of what they are doing and their friends and familycan read about them. They were incredibly popular when they first started and now they are even more so.
In fact, they were so popular that Google bought one of the biggest blogging platforms called Blogger (which I use)as they were able to predict that this was the way that the internet was turning.
With the entrance of Google into the online blogging arena, blogging exploded and many thousands of blogs were startedevery day. While Blogger was becoming more and more popular, another blogging platform called Wordpress was also exploding. The difference between them was that with Wordpress you had more freedom to do whatever you wanted with it. What slowly happened was that lots of 'geeks' started to use it and develop it further until it turned into an extremely powerfulpiece of software.
This is great for you because it means that you will have a huge amount of power behind any online marketing that youdo which uses Wordpress.
One of the reasons that blogs are so powerful is because the search engines totally love them! Right from the startyou could create a blog in the morning, add a few articles in the afternoon and by the next visitors would be visitingyour site.
And it is still working just as well today!
Nowadays there are many different ways of building a website. If you do not know a website scripting language like HTML then you can still build an effective website using a platform like WordPress.
Because of the popularity of Wordpress, people have created add-ons or plug-ins for WordPress that have significantly enhanced its usability and flexibility. In addition, there are many (often free) templates (or themes as they areknown in the WordPress world) that enable you to make your site look almost any way you want it to as well.
WordPress is not perfect – no site building system ever is – but as a shortcut to creating an incredibly effectivewebsite quite quickly, it would be difficult to find anything that is more effective than WordPress.
Wordpress is very easy to navigate around and control, but there are several things that you can do wrong which couldmess up your whole experience.
Here are some of the things you need to know how to do and master to avoid things going wrong:-
The real purpose of blogs is so that people can keep a record of what they are doing and their friends and familycan read about them. They were incredibly popular when they first started and now they are even more so.
In fact, they were so popular that Google bought one of the biggest blogging platforms called Blogger (which I use)as they were able to predict that this was the way that the internet was turning.
With the entrance of Google into the online blogging arena, blogging exploded and many thousands of blogs were startedevery day. While Blogger was becoming more and more popular, another blogging platform called Wordpress was also exploding. The difference between them was that with Wordpress you had more freedom to do whatever you wanted with it. What slowly happened was that lots of 'geeks' started to use it and develop it further until it turned into an extremely powerfulpiece of software.
This is great for you because it means that you will have a huge amount of power behind any online marketing that youdo which uses Wordpress.
One of the reasons that blogs are so powerful is because the search engines totally love them! Right from the startyou could create a blog in the morning, add a few articles in the afternoon and by the next visitors would be visitingyour site.
And it is still working just as well today!
Nowadays there are many different ways of building a website. If you do not know a website scripting language like HTML then you can still build an effective website using a platform like WordPress.
Because of the popularity of Wordpress, people have created add-ons or plug-ins for WordPress that have significantly enhanced its usability and flexibility. In addition, there are many (often free) templates (or themes as they areknown in the WordPress world) that enable you to make your site look almost any way you want it to as well.
WordPress is not perfect – no site building system ever is – but as a shortcut to creating an incredibly effectivewebsite quite quickly, it would be difficult to find anything that is more effective than WordPress.
Wordpress is very easy to navigate around and control, but there are several things that you can do wrong which couldmess up your whole experience.
Here are some of the things you need to know how to do and master to avoid things going wrong:-
- How you can literally click one button and have a great-looking fully-functional website in less than 10 seconds!
- How there are actually two versions of Wordpress and how each can outpower the other in certain situations!
- How choosing the wrong host will kill your blog even before you have created it!
- The importance of the order which you post information to your blog and how the obvious will often not be the correct choice!
- The easiest way to give Google (and the other search engines) exactly what they want!
- Why blogs can be an integral part of your link network even if you didn't know that you had one!
- The easiest ways to make your blog stand out to human visitors (this just takes a few minutes).
- What plugins are and why they are almost as important as your blog itself.
- How to put Adsense or other advertising on your blog so you can be 100% sure that it is optimized correctly.
- What settings you MUST change or else you will be penalized in a big way.
- The important things that you should have on your front page.
- The easiest way to have your visitors subscribing to your list.
Build Your Business with Wordpress is available this month and shows you exactly how to do these things so You can manipulate WordPress to create a superbly effective website quickly.
This way you can improve traffic and therefore improve sales for all your sites (not just your blogs). This is a great resource so check it out now here - http://www.biztoolz.com.au/marketingoninternet.html
Until next time all the best.
Kev Richardson
http://www.biztoolz.com.au/
