Affiliate Disclosure Statement: The Ins and Outs



In December 2009, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated their "deceptive advertising" guidelines in relation to affiliate marketing. In short, the FTC said that if an affiliate marketer has a material relationship (i.e.; making commission) to a product that's reviewed on his/her website, that the affiliate must fully disclose that relationship to his/her readers. These guidelines themselves were not new, having been already in place for other areas of e-commerce such as email and spam. The FTC remains somewhat unclear about how they plan to enforce these guidelines. Regardless, questions about whether and how to create an affiliate disclosure...