As a blogger who loves free stuff, and who occasionally posts for pay, the FTC guidelines on Testimonials & Endorsements for bloggers really concerned me.  I worried that maybe my well of free things and tiny Huge payments would dry up.  Or at the very least I’d have to pay extra taxes or penalties if I didn’t disclose my relationships properly.  Luckily, there are a lot of smarter more informed people out there in the internet who really understand what’s going on.  So here are some great articles to help you figure out these new rules.

TechDirt – Did The FTC’s New ‘Blogger’ Guidelines Just Change The Way All Book/Music Reviews Must Be Conducted?

PCMag - Blogger Freebies May Be Ad Fraud

MediaBistro – FTC Clarifies Blogger Guidelines: ‘We’ve Never Brought a Case Against Somebody Simply for Failure to Disclose’

Slate – The FTC’s Mad Power Grab

Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites – Podcast from Lawyer2Lawyer: The FTC’s Blogger Guidelines

Basically from what I can figure out from all the articles listed above and going over the guidelines, these are the basics that I have gleamed from it all.

1. Whatever relationship you have with an advertiser, you must disclose it on the post and on the website (See my Disclosure Policy Page)

2. Relationship will be determined as anytime you recieve anything from advertiser, such as free books, products, services, advertisements (such as linkbacks), or payments.

3. If you don’t disclose your relationship with advertiser then you can be fined up to $11,000.  Though the FTC has said they have never “hunted down” anyone to pose such a penalty.

What I have done to comply with the guidelines is add a “Disclosure Policy” to all my blogs (even ones I rarely if ever post anything from an advertiser) and then in the post that is a review of something I put a “Disclosure Statement”.  Most of the good advertisers and sponsors have a specific statement they want you to post. Such as the one I received from one of my ARC suppliers, below.

This was book was provided for review by WaterBrook Multnomah.

As long as you do those two things you should be in compliance with the new FTC Guidelines.  Of course, I’m not an attorney, so if you want legal advice on exactly what you need to do to be compliant, then you should contact an attorney.

Although I don’t really like any government agency telling me what to do and how to do it, I think over all this isn’t a bad thing.  I think it’s only right that we tell our readers where we got our products from, and if there is any reason why our opinions may be biased.   I personally don’t let the free products or small large amounts of payments to influence my postings what so ever.  If I don’t like something I’m gonna tell you!  I’m opinionated… otherwise I wouldn’t have so many blogs!  LOL!