A merchant has just asked: I have an affiliate that just registered “trademarknameproducttype.com” and is going to start marketing our new [trademark name] product line. Is this acceptable? I know he’s doing marketing for us, however he’s using our trademarked name. The intent of the above-quoted affiliate is obvious — to get the traffic which [...]
Continue reading about Trademarked Names in Affiliate Domains
Introduced by Amazon back in late nineties, reviews have become a powerful force to drive sales for online businesses of all types. With the attention that online reviews have been receiving from the Federal Trade Commission lately, it seems appropriate to look into the power behind them. A recent CNN article has quoted some interesting [...]
Yesterday’s FIFA 2010 World Cup qualifier between Russia and Germany drew over 100 million of people to their TV screens. If you haven’t watched it, you’ve missed one interesting game. It was a game between two of the best teams in the world: the silver and bronze medal winners of UEFA’s Euro 2008. Germany won: [...]
Continue reading about Massimo Busacca Overlooks Penalty: Mercy or Partiality?
As I was looking for a coder to help one of our clients (her store is running on Yahoo Merchant Solutions) put together an affiliate product feed, I ran across a YourStoreWizards’ shopping feed service. I must admit, I have never heard of them before, and was hesitant to recommend them, but I did mention [...]
Continue reading about Affiliate Data Feeds & Example of YourStoreWizards
Over the past four days I have been receiving numerous emails from merchants and affiliates, asking how to word their texts to meet the new Federal Trade Commission rules for testimonials, reviews and endorsements. Affiliates wonder how to put together disclosures: As a publisher, is there generic type of blurb that I could add to [...]
Continue reading about How to Word Disclosures & Agreements to Meet FTC Rules
Remember the “Gone in 60 Seconds” movie? Well, an average website visitor gives our websites and landing pages considerably less time that that. Some believe that “up to 50 percent of visitors to landing pages will bail in the first eight seconds” [source]. My friend, Avinash Kaushik, believes they’re giving us even less time. In [...]
A tremendous tsunami of blog posts and articles has been raised by the recent Federal Trade Commission’s announcement of its guides for disclosing the sponsor-endorser element in testimonials and endorsements. At the time of this post there currently are 948 news articles and close to 4,000 blog posts on the topic: The wave was to [...]
Continue reading about FTC Says the $11000 Fine “is Not True”
So the Federal Trade Commission has announced the new rules for disclosing the sponsor-endorser relationships. This includes all affiliates that tweet, post, or publish any other online content that has affiliate links embedded in it (or content on which they earn money). But how do you squeeze an appropriate disclosure into the 140 characters of [...]
Continue reading about Twitter Hashtags for Affiliate Tweets
—————————————————– Edit: 2 follow-up posts: (i) FTC Says the $11000 Fine “is Not True”, (ii) How to Word Disclosures & Agreements to Meet FTC Rules —————————————————– On 1 December 2009 the new Federal Trade Commission’s endorsements/testimonials rules are coming into force. I am referring to the “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in [...]
Continue reading about FTC Disclosure Rules & Affiliate Marketing Implications
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