Thanks for the mention here — always good to have some resources on the matter and I'm a fan of David.

He was actually one of the FIRST copywriting courses I took back in the Aesop days when MJ offered the course in like 2002 or 2003.

I'm not sure whether David covers everything such as affiliate blog reviews, email marketing and the like, but this FTC covers the entire gamet.

No — we have made very MINOR changes as of 12/20/09 as I don't believe NicheBOT is in one of the major threat zones where testimonials are being that outlandishly used. For one, we have NO money claims, which I cannot say much for others and their sales pages and their pages continue to remain.

So yeah — I do not believe that the FTC is going after the Keyword Research industry just yet, but rather, I'm sure their targeting will be the health and wellness industry as well as dieting and fitness that tend to make insane outrageously claims about losing weight.

Whereas the diet industry is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, while I believe every case should be significant and deserves as much attention as any other, there are much deeper pockets and many more people being swindled and complaining about the pills they received in the mail promising to burn 10 inches of fat off their body.

Yes, we are weeding out testimonials little by little, and we are ultimately waiting for some sort of initial precedent from any case the FTC takes on. Once the initial case about testimonials is settled and the court has its say-so about it with a published opinion, then there will be more guidance on the matter.

Until then, everyone, including the FTC, is flying by the seat of their pants.

We will be making some changes in the copy that will reflect compliance, but again, the vagueness of the testimonial rule without any borders and without knowing exactly how to measure accordingly is problematic. I think many people are just at a stalemate about this and some just rather not deal with it and just close their doors in the meantime.

The biggest issue on this is the FTC doesn't know how to appropriately measure first of all how the merchant can achieve knowing what the typical results are yet as there haven't been any cases that went through trial.

At my last 9to5 job in the legal industry, I did work for the BSA — Business Software Alliance which was a team of companies like Adobe, Microsoft, etc. that sat on the board to enforce their software rights.

The only way an employer could be taken down for improperly installing too many copies of a software program was usually by a fired or disgruntled employee.

So yeah — unless someone starts receiving a good number of complaints, they really don't have anything to worry about.

But then again, the FTC isn't going to send YOU notice that they have received a number of complaints against you until they actually show up with the complaints and they are ready to take action.

There is a famous line that one of the partners whose firm I managed said that he remembered from law school:

“In an abundance of caution…” is the preface to anything you can think of when it comes to protecting your butt in business. So you should always make sure you're covered by taking the extra steps before the need arises to have to write the FTC back and tell them what a bozo you were for doing what you did.

Hope that made sense because I rambled that off in a first draft format.

I noticed that your Nichebot site here, as of today 12/03/09, is quite packed with testimonials still, is this something that you are going to change at some point in the future?

If Yes, why have you not already made the necessary changes to it?

If No, why not? Is it that you feel that the FTC will never bother to give you or your business a problem over your testimonials?

Also, when reading the FTC site and listening to the video gal, it seem apparent to me that they are “only going to go after folk's they are receiving, or have received, repeated complaints on” -and- they even say themselves that “folk's aren't going to get sued by the FTC the first time they receive a complaint, first time offenders should at least receive a warning from them first time around.

So my opinion is, if your not doing things that make your customers complain about you to the FTC, I wouldn't worry about it too much. There are plenty of 'real' bad people out there to keep them busy for quite some time.

<[:o)

Only today, the bread is a 'Windows 7 Whopper' and the circus is, well…pick a channel!

– donpower.ME

Thanks for the info.. Can you maybe clarify a little for me? What if you have Amazon testimonials on your site.. What type of disclaimer are you supposed to have? (what should it say). Also, if you're selling a physical product from Amazon, do you need to add that you make a commission on each sale?

Enjoying the blog so far..

Liz

Go ahead and email contactus[at]nichebot.com and tell them you recently missed last weeks opening and would like to find out if there are any openings and they'll let you know right away.

Jim