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By John Sylvester in Featured

It was an unusual choice of venue given the stance of the country’s censors, but it didn’t stop News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch and AP chief executive Tom Curley from issuing blistering attacks on the search engines at the World Media Summit in Beijing, describing them as “plagiarists” and “kleptomaniacs”. Yesterday’s news providers may have a point, but is this the right way to go about it, spoiling for a fight with Google, Microsoft and the rest of us?

James Murdoch (Rupert’s son-in-chief), recently issued a fierce assault on the BBC, but this time the speakers at the Beijing summit have taken on not only Google and Microsoft but the entire concept of new media: out goes free news content, together with all indexed pages, RSS, traffic and ad revenue and in comes the paywall. And this is at a time when one of Mr Murdoch’s titles, The Times of London, shows online readership in steep decline.

Next March Mr Murdoch will be 78 years old. Maybe that is the reason he doesn’t “get” new media. I have written before that the model he is soon to unleash on those that read his titles failed in the past and will do so again. And he seems to have totally overlooked the fact that search engines, like Google and Bing, have helped News Corp’s bottom line by driving huge amounts of traffic to its websites.

From our industry’s stance, this content removal is a worrying and nonsensical departure. A comment on theglobeandmail.com bears this out: “Amazing how these dinosaurs still roam the earth. Sadly much of the ‘aggregators’ out there get feeds direct from these news organizations via RSS which these new organizations freely post on the internet for all to use and see. It’s sad to see the absolute lack of understanding for today’s technology by these organizations not willing to adapt or embrace the possibilities until they are looking down the barrel of bankruptcy, and then its blame everyone else for their folly.”

Well, perhaps. But their claim is that “many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material”. The obvious rebuttal is, of course, that the advertising revenues generated from this source are huge, but no matter.

Most of us understand the concerns of the media industry as it struggles to survive in the internet age, but paying to read The Times of London and the Wall Street Journal online, while other newspapers are still publishing their content for free, does seem, well, rather reckless. That is, it’s either all newspapers or none.

Mr Curley told the meeting: “We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission.” This point has been a bone of contention for over a decade. Then came along RSS. Now, it seems as if the argument is to be taken to a new level of determination, although to my knowledge there has been very little reaction forthcoming from the search engines themselves.

But it was Mr Murdoch’s language at the summit, in this spirit of recklessness, which was most telling: “The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.”

Maybe they won’t triumph, but let’s take a look at the probability factor of paid content actually benefiting News Corp. The Guardian newspaper published figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic as follows: “Traffic at Mail Online has jumped almost 60% in the last year…The Guardian was down 7% compared with the previous month to 26,990,072 unique users; the Telegraph was also down by 2.5% to 26,479,638 unique users and traffic to News International’s Times Online dropped more significantly, from 21,216,797 uniques to 18,873,975…an 11.04% decline…Annual traffic growth at Times Online is the lowest of any national newspaper site…” Doesn’t sound too promising when these diving uniques are confronted with a paywall anytime soon.

According to Google’s view on the future of business: An interview with CEO Eric Schmidt on how the internet will change the nature of competition, innovation, and company operations, he stated: “Free is a better price than cheap. And this simple principle has been lost on many a business person. There are business models that involve free with adjacent revenue sources. And, in fact, free is a viable model with branding, service, and other things. But it’s a different business model from what most of us are used to.”

He went on to say, “In the digital world, for digital goods, the marginal cost of distribution and manufacture is effectively zero or near zero. So, certainly, for that category of goods, it’s reasonable to expect that the free model with ancillary branding and revenue opportunities is probably a very good thing.” Writing content for online isn’t exactly a “marginal cost” as he describes. But again, it doesn’t look too promising that Google will cough up.

There was a furore about this years ago, when the National Union of Journalists (NUJ UK) recommended a certain price per thousand words for print and an additional amount if it was placed online. To my knowledge, no journalist has ever been paid extra by a publisher when these stories appeared in both.

So how does this square with Mr Curley at AP? “We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves — at great human and economic cost — to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it.” But they do support it; they fundamentally support your online ad revenue, although he claims they are losing millions.

In contention, AP is about to roll out a “news registry” system that will detect unlicensed uses of their online content. According to an article by Google, what AP and its member newspapers argue is that unauthorised use of this material is “costing them tens of millions of dollars in potential advertising revenue at a time when they can least afford it.”

It’s the music industry all over again. They too couldn’t find an appropriate model when content was copied and exchanged. And then iTorrent went on to circumvent the profits of the film industry.

It strikes me that Rupert Murdoch is certainly not the visionary of new media he thinks he is. The media mogul who once got it right is almost certainly to come unstuck, when not only will he have to go up against the titans of Google and Microsoft in an age where his mainstream online news is failing but, more importantly, he is offering a model of paying for yesterday’s news. Today, people demand breaking news and people’s news with tweets, not content we have already read the day before published by someone else.

By admin in Featured

I hear many people talking about marketing and promotion in the same breath as being the same thing. I don’t believe them, because in my experience they are very different, but they are linked by a common theme… your business.

In a nutshell, marketing can be described as everything you do to attract clients into your business but a promotion is a specific event and time based activity to get people to buy your products or services. To understand this difference, I am going to show you what is involved in running a promotion.

These are the six key elements you need to consider and how you can include them in your business, or your next promotion.

1 The Reason Why:

Canadian advertising man John E. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term ‘Reason Why Advertising’ as far back as 1905 and every promotion you run should have a strong reason for why you are doing it. Events are the usual ‘reason’ such as product launches and significant anniversaries. More unusually, I’ve seen marketers use the birth of a new baby for a sale and even “I need to pay my taxes” to run a promotion. Yes, it is cheesy, but it works.

So not all reasons are good, BUT they are still reasons and they work far better than the “I’m running a promotion this week because I can or should” angle. You have to get their attention and one of the best ways of doing that is to make the story hook them in because the more interesting you make it then then the bigger the impact it will have. Your customers will respond to a promotion with lots of BANG and that means it will grab their ATTENTION much faster.

2 Give Them A Discount Or Special Price:

People are interested in your product and that’s great, but nothing will happen unless you prompt them with a good reason to buy it right now. You have plenty of options here: you can offer a reduced price, a bundled special deal on your products, or a one on one consult with you.

3 Put An End Date On Your Promotion

Some businesses seem to be in permanent sale mode, so there’s no urgency for the customer to buy. Customers are not stupid; they see the advertising and know that this company ALWAYS has a sale on. That’s why it’s important you create a deadline for your promotion. If you then you lose credibility. Having a definitive end date creates urgency and a reason for your potential customer to act now or lose out.

4 Give Something Extra Successful:

Online marketers have mastered the art of giving bonuses and any good promotion should contain a bonus item for ordering now. First you need to look at how relevant the bonus you are offering is to the productyou are selling, and see if it can stand alone in its own value.

Ask yourself whether your bonus item could be sold on its own and does it add value to the promotion you are running?

5 TELL People The Value They Are Getting:

The first time I ‘got’ this I saw my sales increase, and although you may think your bonus is valuable, it won’t always be obvious to the customer so you must make it clear to them.

Even if you do put a value next to the items you are selling, don’t assume your prospect or customer has worked it out for themselves. If the total value is £250 tell them it is £250 because if you leave them to add it up for themselves they generally won’t do it.

6 Finally…Tell People What To Do Next All the above points are meaningless unless you follow through with this one. Tell them what you want them to do. For example; fill in this form, go to this website, click this link.

Never, ever leave it up to the customer to find out how to order your products. If it is not clear then they won’t make the effort, so just let them know what you want them to do.

For example: “To order this Internet Marketing Guide and take advantage of the special price with all of your bonuses worth £350 click on this button now.” No mistakes, no confusion…just sales.

Follow these six steps and you are on your way to your most successful promotion ever.

Neil Stafford is Editor and Publisher of the Internet Marketing Review the UK’s longest running PRINTED Internet Marketing Newsletter. ‘Test drive’ the Newsletter for FREE – Visit this special web page for more information: Internet Marketing Review Newsletter

By admin in Featured

Let’s face it, almost all SEO agencies, like most online service providers, will outsource some aspects of their work. This is nothing new. In fact, even before the advent of the internet, businesses would traditionally outsource certain tasks – Hence the plethora of ‘temping’ agencies.

Commonly outsourced tasks were things like telesales, recruitment, even accounting and auditing to some extent. But with the massive growth of online business, outsourcing has grown, and indeed actually changed in its very nature.

In the online business world, the term outsourcing has almost become synonymous with paying for workers that actually live in other countries, whereas previously the outsource workers would be the same country as the employer, if not the same city!

What about the question we started with? When is an SEO agency NOT an SEO agency?

The answer to this is not simple, and the question is really only meant to provoke thought. My own personal feeling is that an SEO agency is not really an SEO agency when it outsources all the work except the customer facing aspect.

What I mean by this is that some SEO ‘agencies’ merely employ UK based office staff to do the selling and silver tongue sales pitches, then farm out the actual work to cheap overseas labour. The better agencies may have their own database of workers they use on a regular basis, and trust – whereas others may simply use freelancer type websites to ‘pick up’ staff.

Whilst this may not at first seem like much of an issue, it is not exactly honest!. The kind of setup mentioned above, to my mind, is NOT an SEO agency, more of a sales agency that then passes the work on to others.
I guess you could argue that they are more than a sales agency; after all, perhaps they plan a campaign prior to the work being handed out to freelancers, and pop a quick report together once it’s been done… Alright, let’s call them an admin agency ;-)

Is it wrong for SEO agencies to outsource at all?

Again, this is down to a matter of opinion. I think its fine for any company, whatever its industry, to outsource some of its workload. At kingpin-seo we sometimes outsource bits and pieces – who doesn’t! But perhaps the problem arises when the bulk of the workload is outsourced, without the knowledge of the SEO agencies clients.

The client is in the belief that their work is being carried out by UK workers, whereas unbeknownst to them, someone half way round the world is carrying out the actual work, and for a tiny fraction of the amount the client is paying the agency.

What is it good to outsource, and what shouldn’t be outsourced

Again, this is my own opinion – but it is founded on background knowledge of what our own clients are happy with.

We feel it is okay to outsource small amounts of manual, repetitive work, things like gathering initial, basic info on competitors (although we prefer to carry out in depth reports in house!) , and some elements of promotion (such as submitting articles, that are of course, written in house)

A basic rule of thumb is that if the client would not be comfortable with something being outsourced, then it shouldn’t be outsourced! – Simply!

Another little rule of thumb is that if something requires or involves decision making that could have some bearing or impact upon the SEO campaign on the whole, it shouldn’t be outsourced.

How do I find a decent SEO Agency, that isn’t simply an ‘Outsource/Admin Agency?

Simple! – Just ask!. Seriously, call or email the agency, and ask them straight if they outsource, and to what extent they outsource.

If they say they don’t outsource anything at all, either they are lying, or they don’t fully understand the question!

If they say they do outsource, but are fully transparent about what processes and work practices they outsource – that’s a good start. We can define in a single sentence our stance on outsourcing, and we suggest you ask any potential SEO agency to do the same…

“We never outsource any decision making, creative production or administrative workload, everything is planned in house, and the vast majority of our work is carried out in house… any outsourcing we do is isolated to repetitive techniques such as submitting a previously written high quality piece of content to directories & websites”

If an agency is not willing to disclose to what extent they outsource, then I would just walk away. At the end of the day, it is YOUR money being used for this service, and just like a service offered offline, you are entitled to know where it is going!

Resource Section – About Kingpin-seo

Kingpin-seo is a client focused, ethical SEO agency that benefits from Google news approval. Kingpin provides cutting edge ethical link building services and transparent SEO techniques for its SEO clients.

By admin in Featured

link baitSEO is a race. And in any race learning from your competitors makes you a better runner. Even when you’re running first it’s sometimes good to look back and check the runner-ups. And if you’re not the yellow jersey guy, you absolutely should examine the leaders: their gear, their training, their strategy. In SEO the most interesting thing about your competition are their links.

Whether you like it or not SEO is still pretty much about links. Good link profile can make up for almost any lack of optimized content and other onpage flaws. Love or hate, the best thing you can do about it is embrace the fact and run with it.

So let’s go through some tricks that will enable you to look deeper into your competition’s link profile granting you access to the restricted areas: their locker room, dirty laundry and even the briefing hall where they plan their link building strategies.

By Jerry Bader in Featured

webmastersEveryone wants to do more business. Everyone occasionally runs a promotion, a new marketing initiative, a product launch, or a new seasonal lineup. Everyone has a website stuffed with all kinds of content ranging from the important to the useless. But only the truly smart business minds understand that campaigns require their own space and identity if they are to succeed. And when it comes to using the Web as your vehicle for such a campaign, the obvious solution is a Video Campaign Microsite.

By admin in Featured

In essence, a sales page is an online document designed to generate sales, to convince your potential customer that you can provide the best product or service for their immediate needs.

In one sense, your sales page can be thought of as your opening pitch. If done correctly, it can make visitors to your membership site want to learn more…to seek out the information that you can provide. It can subtly influence a person to take a specific action by making an offer to them. Targeting the right audience and being specific in what you offer is the most effective way to use a sales page.

It should be realized, however, that even the best sales page only does a part of the job of retaining members for your membership site. This sales tool can only wet their appetite for what you have to offer; it’s up to you to convince them that the quality of the site lives up to their expectation. One method is to provide support content by listing testimonials on your sales page from present members that show exactly what the potential is for their success.

Now that you know what a great sales page can offer your membership site, it is important to know how to write an effective one. The first step is to research your product. After all, you’re the one that designed the site. But if you think about it, even you might not know all the potential advantages or pitfalls of the site, especially if you’re following the lead of someone who has gone before. So, ask questions and do some Internet searches on the nature of your membership site. The more you know, the more targeted and effective your sales page will be and the quicker you will grow.

Learning about your audience is the next step. Any successful writer will tell you that half the battle is learning how the mind of your targeted audience works. Does your membership site target stay at home moms? Or is it designed for the young entrepreneur? Depending on who you want to attract, you should write your sales letter in such a way that the targeted audience can easily relate.

Finally, it is important to remember that the whole purpose of a sales page is to make sure the client knows the benefits of your membership site. What a potential buyer will gain from the features of your particular membership site is a benefit. For example, if your site offers a feature such as available online chat with an expert, the benefit would be expert knowledge offered in real time or immediate satisfaction. It is important that your sales page reflect this and what it can mean to potential members.

A sales page is one of the most important elements for the success of any membership site. It is, most likely, one of the first things your potential members will read before they decide to join. Taking the time to construct the right sales page for your membership site could mean the difference between growing your business or staying stagnant.

Kathy Dobson is a free spirited entrepreneur and business owner committed to helping individuals discover personal and financial freedom through membership sites and Internet marketing. If you would like to learn more about setting up a membership site, visit and sign up for my mini-course on membership sites:
http://www.crazycashmembershipsites.com

By Eric Gruber in Featured

I am a natural born writer, so writing has always come easy to me. But, when I had to start writing articles everyday for my blog, for my newsletter and for article submission – I quickly ran out of article topics.
Then one day as I was reviewing all of my articles, I realized that there was a structure and a formula behind each article I wrote. By recognizing these formulas I’m able to write an unlimited amount of articles – and write them in record time.

If you want to overcome writer’s block and start writing articles faster, then you want to model proven article writing formats, such as those found in my “Complete Instant Article Writing Templates Kit”

Here Are 10 Different Article Writing Templates That Will Help You Overcome Writer’s Block So You Can Write Articles Faster…

1. Myth Buster Article Template — With this template, you crush your prospects’ preconceived thoughts and notions about a subject. Take 3 myths people have about your industry. Explain to people why it’s a myth. And, then show them what can happen if they clear this myth from their mind.

2. Top 10 Article Template – Have you ever seen a Jay Leno, David Letterman or any other late night television show that doesn’t have a “Top 10″ segment? Well, neither have I! It’s because people love top 10 lists. So give readers and prospects what they want.

3. How-To Article Template – It’s no secret that “how-to” articles and blog posts are some of the most sought after, linked to and bookmarked content online. People want useful information and they’ll reward you by promoting it to others when you provide it. It’s also one of the easiest articles to write.

4. Step-by-Step Article Template – If you think writing a how-to article is easy especially if you’re using article templates, then you’ll think the step-by-step article template is a cinch. In how-to articles I start off with the problem or pain that my prospects are experiencing. Then I give them a solution and end with the results. In a step-by-step article, I like to sell the dream. I want to instantly connect with my prospects’ desires, wishes and needs. So, I explain the results up front that can happen if you follow my advice that I give in the article.

5. Quiz Article Template – Why do you think magazines publish quizzes all the time? Why do you think the quizzes you find on Facebook are so popular? It’s because people love taking quizzes, unless it’s a pop quiz in school. So, why not use a quiz format for your articles that will enable you to do a soft, pre-sell for your products and services. When readers answer “NO” to your questions, you’re implanting thoughts of “Maybe, we should be doing this.”

6. 3 Mistakes Article Template – When you mention mistakes within your title and throughout your article, you will automatically grab attention. People will think in their minds, “Am I doing this right? I better find out!”

7. The Why Article Template – How-to articles are great. And, as I said before, it’s the most popular article template. But sometimes, when you give too much of the “HOW,” you give prospects no reason to go to your website for more information. So, why not write an article that focuses on the “WHY” and give prospects a reason to visit your website and join your list.

8. Differentiate Yourself Article Template – This template helped Article Marketing Experts make more than 10,000.00 in less than 2 months. I created an article entitled “How to Choose an Article Submission Service.” Within this article, I created 10 questions that prospects should ask. Now these questions were designed to show everything that my service includes that no one else offers. It educated prospects and at the same time, it pre-sold my article submission services.

9. Failure to Success Article Template – Did you ever notice how speakers (especially those who sell from the stage) would always tell you about their hardships? Why do speakers do this? Because we want you to connect with us. We want to show you that if we can achieve success, so can you. By opening up and revealing your failures or your scars, you add realness to your written words. People will look up to you and they will want your guidance.

10. What I Learned From Article Template — Through my years as the article marketing expert, I’ve learned that I can connect almost anything – no matter how unrelated it may seem – to various secrets that I teach my clients, subscribers and readers. For example, I’ve written articles such as “7 Article Marketing Lessons I Learned From Being a Martial Arts Champion,” 3 Lessons I Learned From the Mother of a Fearless PR LEADER,” and “5 Relationship Building Lessons I Learned From My Parents.”

These templates are guaranteed to help you write articles faster. In many cases, you’ll be able to write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Now, I invite you to check out 3 of my favorite instant article writing templates all fleshed out with article samples so you can see exactly how each template should be used. Get my free instant article writing templates at http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com

Article Marketing Expert Eric Gruber uses the power of articles to create online opportunities for Internet marketers, small business owners, authors, entrepreneurs and speakers who want more publicity, prospects and profits. Now, you can get 3 of his favorite his instant article writing templates that will help you overcome writer’s block and write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Get your free article templates now: http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com

By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

article writingAdvertising should be part of any growing business. Regardless of what your business does, customers have to know about your product or service in order for them to use it. As the Internet becomes a primary source for consumer knowledge and increasingly, purchasing, it’s imperative that your company gets its message out through this medium. However, advertising on the Internet works differently than traditional advertising in that the customer must find the business instead of a business coming to the customer.

Copywriting is the creation of text used in advertising, regardless of medium. This covers every aspect of an advertisement: promotional flyers, jingles, slogans, billboards, and web pages. All of these strive to put your product or service in the best light possible and are aimed directly at the consumer; except for web pages. With web pages there is another audience your advertisement must also target: the search engine.

By Tinu AbayomiPaul in Featured

If you want to get explosive results from social media, one thing you’ll have to lean heavily on is your ability to be a team player.

You see, one of the top reasons why people do things for you – things like submitting your site to a social bookmarking site – is because they feel you’ve added value to their lives.

If you’re lucky, you already have an audience, and whether it’s small or large, you have people who will share your content because they got value from it.

But that’s not the only reason. That’s handy if you don’t have an audience yet.

Another reason why people will share your content is fairly obvious. At some point, you shared theirs.

That doesn’t mean the world of influence in social media is simply a game of quid pro quo, where if you submit my link, I’ll submit yours. No winking in this article is implied or inferred – I’m being totally serious. If it was as simple as “share to be shared”, you could just go to the top person in the network, share their content and be done with it.

Doesn’t work that way. That top person got where they were because they pleased their audience. And they must keep pleasing that audience if they want to stay there. So they have to stay on topic, with fresh content, that’s not just good, it’s excellent.

That isn’t to say that sharing other people’s articles, videos and blog posts in social bookmarking, news and networking sites doesn’t help. It does. Just don’t plan on seeing dividends from every share you invest, or from the same person.

Having said that, since sharing generously helps, it makes sense to learn how to share better.

The first step to better sharing is faster sharing.

Organization helps dramatically, so it’s a good idea to develop some type of habit in your link sharing, starting with how you gather links, and where you share them.

Personally, I like to start with people who’ve commented on my blog (with legitimate replies, not borderline spam or paid comments), then links people have posted to our Open for Web Business Facebook Group, then links I’ve shared myself on Twitter, Business Week’s Business Exchange, StumbleUpon, or Facebook.

Once I’ve gathered all my links, I split them into groups.

In coming up with your own routine, I can tell you a couple of things that might help from experience.

First, you’ll likely want to save all the links to your favorite social bookmarking site. There’s a general one like Delicious or Furl that will be the place that you want to save every link you ever find.

Then you may find that of those links, there’s a subset that will be remarkable enough to blog about, or submit to social news sites.

Also keep in mind that several of the sites you use reach difference audiences. You’ll find that sharing certain links in multiple places expands the audience the link reaches, even though there may be some overlap.

This is why I continue sharing after I’ve bookmarked. The ones that are relevant to my blog topics, I also splice into my feed or blog, using plug-ins to automate the process.

This is the special group of links I only share on Delicious that get spliced into my site feed as well, as a service to my readers.

Then, I go to Stumble Upon and share the best of the links. I later submit the ones that I don’t see getting deserved attention to social news sites. I also vote on the ones that are already submitted.

This may sound like a lot of work, but the entire ritual takes a few minutes a day. You simply use tools that automate part of the process, that leverage RSS or web applications that let you do more than half of your social media marketing from one place.

When you can share faster, you can share more. When you share more, both a subset of the people whose content you have shared, and the people observing you as a sharer, will help you get one step closer to explosive results from social media.

Tinu AbayomiPaul – This article is one small piece of the puzzle that is social media. Find out how you can get 27,000 visitors from just one social media site by making a few small changes to your routine. Learn which ones give you the Ultimate Power in Social Media – read a free chapter today.

By Chip Cooper in Featured

In recognition of the increasing influence of social media online, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on October 5, 2009, for the first time since 1980, issued new regulations governing online testimonials and endorsements by bloggers.

If you operate a blog site, your exposure to legal liability may have increased exponentially. Violators could be fined up to $11,000. And you face new liability associated with statements made by your endorsers, such as affiliates.

It’s critical that you understand how these regulations affect your website business.

A Quick Summary

In a nutshell, the new regulations are aimed at protection of online consumers. The FTC wants to regulate blogs to see if they’re trading testimonials and favorable reviews for some kind of financial reward. That’s a good thing.

The not-so-good-thing is that the new regulations may be overbroad and even in conflict with existing legal precedent. As a result, they may subject harmless, every-day activities to potential liability. Serious liability.

A good way to see how the regulations affect you is to consider 3 basic questions discussed below.

No. 1 – Threshold Question: Are You Even Covered By The New Regulations?

If you have a blog on your site, or if a blog is essentially your site, and all you do is publish creative content about your areas of interest, you’re not even covered by the new regulations.

No worries.

No. 2 – Are You Promoting Someone Else’s Products or Services?

If you promote or pitch someone else’s products or services on your blog, there are 2 key requirements under the new regulations:

  • disclose “material connections” — you must disclose all incentives you receive — cash, gifts, benefits, etc. – for promoting or pitching the product or service, and
  • disclose typical results — you can’t get away any more with small print disclaimers such as “results not typical”; you’re now required to provide a more complete and forthright picture of what can be reasonably expected from a product or service.

If you’re a violator, you could be fined up to $11,000. In addition, you could be held liable for false, misleading, and unsubstantiated statements.

This all sounds like a great win for consumers; however, It doesn’t take much creativity to imagine horror stories with the “material connections” requirement.

Example: suppose you’re a book reviewer. Book publishers routinely send you free books to review. If you fail to disclose that the book was free in your review, will you be fined $11,000? Technically, your failure to disclose the free book would be a violation, but would you be fined? That’s anyone’s guess. If you’re not fined, and someone else in a similar position is fined, is that selective enforcement? As you can see, there’re a lot of potential problems with well-intentioned, but overbroad regulation.

No. 3 – Do You Recruit Other Bloggers To Pitch Your Products or Services?

If you recruit other bloggers to pitch your products or services, such as affiliates, you’re an “advertiser” under the regulations. As an advertiser that sponsors endorsers, under the new regulations you’re required to:

  • provide guidance and training to ensure that statements made by your affiliate-bloggers are truthful, not misleading, and substantiated, and
  • monitor your affiliate-bloggers and take steps necessary to stop the publication of deceptive representations when they are discovered.

The new regulations apparently embody the concept that advertisers can be held liable for the endorsement-related sins of their affiliate-bloggers. The FTC stated: “It is foreseeable that an endorser may exaggerate the benefits of a free product or fail to disclose a material relationship where one exists. In employing this means of marketing, the advertiser has assumed the risk that an endorser may fail to disclose a material connection or misrepresent a product, and the potential liability that accompanies that risk”.

Legal scholars are now debating whether this new liability exposure for advertisers is in conflict with a well-established legal defense provided by a federal statute (47 USC 230(c)(1)), which reads: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In simple terms, this statute has been interpreted to mean that Party A is not liable for Party B’s online content.

Has the FTC overlooked 47 USC 230 in its haste to regulate? The courts will have to sort this out. Only time will tell.

Conclusion

The FTC was well-intentioned in its new blog-related regulations. Protection of online consumers is a worthy undertaking.

However, overbroad regulations, particularly if they are in part contrary to well established legal precedent may create as many problems as they solve.

One thing is clear, however — if you fall under No.s 2 or 3 above, protecting yourself from unexpected legal liability should be a high priority.

Leading Internet, IP and software lawyer Chip Cooper has automated the process of drafting website documents for small websites with his MyLegalFirewall website documents drafting service. Discover how quick, easy, and cost-effective it is to determine which legal documents you need, draft them online, and claim your FREE Special Report, Determine Which Legal Documents Your Website Really Needs, at ==> http://digicontracts.com/kits/firewall.aspx

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