The testimonial should be coming from someone that has used the product and is writing the testimonial for you as an endorsement. You could edit the testimonial for spelling and grammar, but essentially it should be in the words of the person giving it.

Now, I wonder, should we be asking the folks that happily give us their testimonials, “Did you actually read this e-book or is it still sitting on your hard drive?” “If you did read it have you taken action?” “If you did take action, how is this working for you?”

“Example 4: A well-known celebrity appears in an infomercial for an oven roasting bag
that purportedly cooks every chicken perfectly in thirty minutes. During the shooting of
the infomercial, the celebrity watches five attempts to cook chickens using the bag. In
each attempt, the chicken is undercooked after thirty minutes and requires sixty minutes of
cooking time. In the commercial, the celebrity places an uncooked chicken in the oven
roasting bag and places the bag in one oven. He then takes a chicken roasting bag from a
second oven, removes from the bag what appears to be a perfectly cooked chicken, tastes
the chicken, and says that if you want perfect chicken every time, in just thirty minutes,
this is the product you need. A significant percentage of consumers are likely to believe
the celebrity’s statements represent his own views even though he is reading from a script.
The celebrity is subject to liability for his statement about the product. The advertiser is
also liable for misrepresentations made through the endorsement.”

It will be interesting to see how these commercials get changed to fit the ruling and how the FTC handles these commercials.

I’m thinking that they will have their hands full going after these ads as soon as consumers start filing frivolous lawsuits, which you know they will. They will be thinking this is their free ticket to wealth. It will no longer be “will they sue?” It will be “how much will they sue for?”.

These large corporations may have the deep pockets for FTC payoffs and consumer law suit pay offs. Who knows how it will play out.

What really scares me is that the people that are working from home on the Internet and just make enough to pay their bills, but are without the means for payoffs or lawsuits, will be the ones attacked first. Meanwhile, the big businesses it will continue to remain in the “good old boy network” and will carry on with business as usual.

Today is 5 December yet I am still seeing Extend’s commercials on the T.V. at all hours of the day and night. Apparently they aren’t afraid of the FTC or of lawsuits. Makes me wonder who got paid off there?

I still get emails telling me how many dollars I have coming to me or a box of money they want to ship to me. All I have to do is pay some small fee
and give them my information. There was even a message telling me there was an idiote at the airport waiting for me.

How about the FBI and the IRS messages where they are willing to help me get this so called money?

I still get this crap.

I even got a check in the mail for several thousand dollars and all I had to due was cash it and buy a few things with the money and wire the rest of the money back to them as a test of my honesty. I took the check to the bank and they told me it was a fake as I beleived it would be.

It hides the fact it is an afiliate sales link.

It’s like a hollywood movie … a 5-man team is sent to save the world against all odds. Lt. Kozlowski and Sgt. Johnson are taken out fighting the bad guys. Frankie is fatally wounded and dies heroically helping the team make it to the room with the red button that must be pressed to cause the villainous lair to self-destruct. With an unexpected twist of cool irony, grit, a patriotic determination to get the job done and quick reflexes, the blue eyed-hero and the foxy girl then end all evil and save the planet just as everything seems to be completely lost, and barely escape the massive explosions with a running dive for cover. They then emerge from the toxic smoke, bruised, their faces sooty, their uniforms torn and bloodied, and walk away from the apocalyptic scene smiling and triumphant. Movie fades to black, end credits roll.

Hurrah, good has once again triumphed over evil and the online world is safe at last. All websites now comply with the new FTC rules and guidelines.

This would be true for any affiliate network based in the US. The FTC is very smart at finding your Achilles heel.

Rather than playing victim about this ruling, though, we can look at the positive side. Following the rules gives us a chance to differentiate ourselves from the scammers.

I imagine that many publishers will ignore the ruling and do business as usual. That means that by simply following the rules and being upfront about it, we will come across as different from what people expect.

Disclose what needs to be disclosed in connection with a personal statement of your business philosophy — a philosophy founded on honesty and genuine value.

Customers are hungry for someone they can trust.

Yes, it will take some creativity to generate the same kind of desire to buy that sprang from using exceptional results that we knew that most people wouldn’t achieve.

Marketers, though, are a resourceful bunch. I’m confident that we’ll find ways to tap into people’s emotions with honesty and transparency — and maybe, in the process, find ways that help raise the average results of our customers instead of resigning ourselves to collecting money from customers who never use our products to their fullest potential and shrugging off their lack of results as being beyond our control.

All obstacles contain in them hidden opportunities. I have no doubt that, as we get used to the new rules, we’ll find opportunities that this obstacle conceals.

Looking forward to the next post!

Joe