Tag Archives: disclosure

How To Get An Authority Link To Your Affiliate Review

Erik Ortega is going to get a link from me for TriFilliate PayDay as he left a comment with a link to his review. The reasons why I am mentioning this? I think Erik represents the “good” human side of affiliate marketing and is learning his lessons well, and working hard. His affiliate blog is [...]

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FTC Fake Bait & Disclosure

IANAL so I am not going to offer anything material to any conversations about the new FTC guidance.

But this annoyed me yesterday

Clickbank has required for some time (at least 2 years) that affiliates comply with FTC recommendations for WOMM. That could just be looked at as a legal “out” but it is there in writing.

There is lots of noise (and some signal) over the last couple of days about the FTC, so affiliates are using it in headlines for email promotions. I opened one and the link was a Clickbank promotion, I opened a second, and it was to a genuine blog post.

Here is what the person promoting an affiliate product sent

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Rackspace Cloud (Mosso) Link To Us Payola

I am actually a fan of your new Cloud Servers service. There are some huge benefits in using your service that as both a marketing geek and affiliate I can highlight and potentially drive you a lot of business.

However today you have just introduced a payola scheme that will make every one of my clean affiliate links look like a paid link, thus I am going to have to nofollow every single link I give you, forever.

You want me to use badges like this, and in exchange will give me “Goodies” of an unspecified nature.

Powered by Rackspace Cloud Hosting - Formerly Mosso

Powered by Rackspace Cloud Hosting

The links are visible, nothing is hidden, but all the same it is effectively a paid linking scheme.

Here is what they said in an email sent to customers

Our New “Link-To-Us” Program
We’re also launching a new “Link-To-Us” program today. In essence, customers who post new links or change their old Mosso links on their websites to our new http://www.rackspacecloud.com site will receive special goodies. The more sites you post a link on, the more great stuff you will get. How cool is that? Please check out all the links here: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/links

Thanks so much for being a part of the Rackspace family, and please keep the feedback coming so that we can continue to build the most complete and easy-to-use cloud platform on the web.

The sad thing is this would all be unnecessary if you just made some minor changes to your affiliate program.

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UK Consumer Protection Unfair Trading Regulations That Might Affect Advertising, Links, Affiliates & Product Launches

Lets preface this by I am not a lawyer, and I am aware that that is a very long headline and title.

Judith at SEO Chicks was looking at the new UK Unfair Trading Regulations

Here is a link to the official guidance (PDF).

What follows are my own notes whilst reading through the document, which I thought some readers might find useful, though you should read it in full if you trade from the UK (maybe 400+ subscribers)

6 BANNED PRACTICES (SCHEDULE 1)

(7) Falsely stating that a product will only be available for a very limited
time, or that it will

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Dear Jason Calacanis – The Good Citizen Of The Interwebs?

I honestly want to believe that you are a good internet citizen, and your attacks on search engine optimization and now affiliate marketers are honest, and without any form of prejudice.

So while you are attacking affiliate marketing, please ensure you have first of all cleared up all the problems in the paid links debate, such as what seems to be a company, where you are on the board of directors, buying links.

It is widely discussed that buying links in Wordpress themes is something that might be a signal of web spam, and the same should be true for buying links

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Techcrunch RSS Subscriber Payola?

Maybe I should enter these lyrics into the SEO Lyrics contest Payola makes the world go around The world go around The world go around Payola makes the world go around It makes the world go ’round. All I have replaced is the word “money” with the word “payola” because not all forms of payola [...]

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Blogging Full Disclosure Debacle – Grow Some Brass Ones

I like to keep a fairly professional and level head when I am discussing various issues on this blog but unfortunately I have just listened to the pre-recording that Shoemoney did with Rand Fiskin about full disclosure when blogging, and quite honestly whilst I empathise with some of the points both made, I think in [...]

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Letting Other People Write The LinkBait

A lot of the things I write go completely over the head of many of my readers, and in some ways that is actually a concious decision which certainly costs me a much higher readership. I know that an article covering the importance of good anchor text or choosing a niche would help a lot [...]

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Don’t Be An Idiot

I have been tempted to comment on the “Bloggers Code of Conduct” meme since it started. Lots has been said by hundreds of people, and most of what was said was actually just as long winded and inconsequential as the original bull’s manure. The follow up seems to be him treading in it. There are [...]

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I Bet You Missed Some of These (March 07)

These are some highlights (in my opinion) of some of the content I have created over the last month. If I have missed anything out which you enjoyed or gained some value from, please let others know in the comments. WordPress SEO Tips & Hacks Subscribe to Comments Hacks – I am including this at [...]

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