Clarity In Your Affiliate Disclosure - Conspicuous Link Disclosure Dilemma

bybenignmind

132 followers

Updated 4 years ago

Everyday we learn new things and make changes based on our learning experience. I do this daily by giving time out of my busy schedule. This keeps things going. And so our understanding grows.

My Journey at Wealthy Affiliate began when I saw one blog post related to Wealthy Affiliate. I registered as a free member after reading the number of benefits that the platform provides. Within 4-5 days, I became premium member as I was astonished by the Online Entrepreneur Certification Course. It was of great value to me as a beginner.

Now I am at Level 4 (Mastering Social Engagement). I understand about the importance of Affiliate Disclosure in our blog as an affiliate. So I added it as a Page in the footer area of my blog. I enabled the NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW of that page but didn't disabled the SEO (used All in one SEO Plugin). All fine.

Then one day while I was doing some research on one of my blog post, I found another blog post from one of the famous blogger in the same niche.

This blogger was very transparent and clear with the Affiliate Disclosure in the following ways-

1) The blog was having Affiliate Disclosure Page.

2) Each blog post starts with the following statement-

<POST TITLE>
(This post contains affiliate links. You can read my full disclosure <here>)

NOTE: The <POST TITLE> is the title of that blog post and <here> is the link to Affiliate Disclosure Page.

So although I have Affiliate Disclosure Page (point 1 above) in the footer but in my any post I didn't mentioned that it contains affiliate links. All fine.

Then after 1 or 2 days while I was doing some research on ifs and buts of Affiliate Marketing, I found one article from Amazon Associates on- Why do I have to identify myself as an Associate? How should I do this on social media?

The thing that striked me was the 2nd point - Conspicuous

So to comply with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations, your affiliate link should be Conspicuous.

Your link-level disclosure should be placed near any affiliate link or product review in a location that customers will notice easily. They shouldn't have to hunt for it.

So after reading that article, the 2nd point of that famous blogging website again striked me. And why not. It was Conspicuous link-level disclosure that was as per FTC regulations.

That is when I thought to write this blog post.