On October 5^th, 2009 the FTC published and released to the public its final revisions on guides governing endorsements and testimonials.

So what does this mean for Bloggers that promote product?

If you are endorsing or promoting a product by doing reviews, you will have to state that you get compensaion for you efforts should someone by from your link. Its pretty simple, the readers that come to your site will now be informed by you that you will be compensated if they buy from your link. You may do somethin as simple as saying, “Hey if you buy from this link I will get a little commission if thats alright with you” Something like that. It’s always a good idea to get the right legal advice in these matters. I have no legal training and am not a lawyer. “Of course this is a disclaimer.”

This new ruling goes into effect on Dec. 1^st, 2009. You are not in a bad situation here and should consider that this could help you by eliminating the bad guys out there that are not honest. What will be bad for you is if you do not change according to the revisions.

David Goldman, staff writer for CNN Money notes in his article released on October 6^th, that the existing rules carry a fine as high as $11,000 if product endorsers and reviewers don’t comply.

Frank Kern did an amazing job writing a post on this subject also. you can do a search for him if you have not read his stuff already. Franks article gives some cool stuff that he learned from his lawyer buddy.

So, do yourself a favor and go to the Federal Trade Commission site and read the entire article.

Personally, I think it is great for bloggers that are truthful and want to give great content to help consumers make informed decision on a purchase. I truely am sold on the fact that this will help the good guy out there and weed out the deceptive marketers and give our customers a warm fuzzy felling again about buying online.

God Bless!

The Bloggomaniac

The situation with digital data parallels earlier changes in music technology. Think of the progression from cylinders to flat vinyl albums to cassette and 8-track tapes to CDs, not to mention mp3s. Who can play those music cylinders now? Similarly, a person’s digital diary on a 5 ¼” floppy disk would now be almost unreadable, as technology has progressed through 3 1/2″ disks to CD-ROM to flash drives. All that music and all that data is simple gone. If a person writes data about their whole life on blog entries, and the hosting company goes out of business, then where are that person’s thoughts and reflections?

Ironically, ancient records in archaic formats may be longer-lasting than digital data that can easily be lost. Historians can reconstruct Babylonian history from cuneiform tablets, and Egyptian history from hieroglyphs on monuments. Even America’s early history will remain known because it was written on paper, in letters, personal accounts and other documents. But if the software for blogging changes drastically in the next few decades, millions of blogs containing accounts and analysis of today’s history could become unreadable. Blogs are less easily preserved than a clay tablet or even a paper book.

On a smaller scale, blogs themselves are constantly vanishing, as people move them to new servers, start new ones, or simply stop updating altogether. Members of a blogging community, having no other way of knowing the person, lose touch and may never discover what happened to their friend. The blog posts sit there until the host site archives them or deletes them for inactivity, and the person is gone from online history.

As record-keeping continues switch to digital formats and away from paper that might still have been readable a century or two from now, the question of lost records grows in importance. The expense alone of continually upgrading records to new, technological formats is very high, so as people rush headlong into those technologies, they simply resign themselves to losing older data. With the disappearance of the weblogs of ordinary people, as well as those making history, and even people’s simple deletion of their own email, data is vanishing that might leave huge gaps in the future understanding of current world events.

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