I was reading over on WashingtonPost that the FTC is working on regulating word of mouth marketing. I can see this impacting a lot of people I know, especially when you think about affiliate marketing and paid blog posting.

Now, I’m pretty open about what I do, even if I don’t label every single entry as a paid post. But this has me thinking about how much and how obvious a disclosure they’re talking about. That’s pretty relevant, after all.

The idea doesn’t bother me. While the article makes it sound like much of what they’re looking at is the practice of sending out essentially shills to talk about the products, I would expect online ventures to be included.

So long as you don’t have to disclose on every product review or endorsement I don’t see this as too challenging. If a basic disclosure that you might be paid for your posts is all that is required, along with a link to said disclosure, it shouldn’t be too hard. On some of my sites I’ve already added a basic statement of that sort in my site disclaimer, rather than creating a whole new page.

If you do any sort of product recommendation of any sort, I’d recommend keeping an eye on this one, even if you always give your own honest opinion. You don’t want to get fined or have a problem with the FTC.

Update:

Make sure you read Advertising Age’s take on this for a fuller impression. Found out about it on a forum and thought it was worth adding to this post.