Affiliate Disclosure
Up until recently, the Amazon Affiliate disclosure and the FTC affiliate disclosure statement were two different things. Back in the day, Amazon affiliates weren’t obligated to comply with FTC guidelines, but now they are.
In this post, we’re looking at several affiliate link disclosure examples, best practices, and a couple of dos and don’ts.
Do you need an affiliate disclosure?
The short answer to this question is yes. Whether you monetize your website through the Amazon Associates program or something different, you have to tell your readers that there could be affiliate links in your content.
According to the new requirements, you have to make this clear to your visitors even before they get a chance to click on a link. If you do not comply with the FTC guidelines, you could risk a hefty fine by the Federal Trade Commission.
On top of that, you might be booted out of your affiliate network.
Affiliate disclosure advice
Ideally, you should place your disclosure as close to the affiliate link as possible, but as you know, this might be impossible. If you have several hundred pages on your website where you have recommended services or products, you might have a hard time making changes on each and every one.
This is why the best way to include the disclosure would be to place it right at the beginning of every article. Until now, you could have gotten away with a disclosure in the footer of your site, which basically meant that it showed up on all of your pages.
Unfortunately, that is no longer in accordance with Amazon’s and other affiliate networks’ requirements. If you also use social media to promote your affiliate links, you also have to specify that they might make you a commission.
Affiliate disclosure don’ts
If you want to make things easier for yourself and your team, you might be tempted to include the text in your sidebar. Well, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, there are some users that might not be able to see it, so you will once again go against the FTC requirements.
Some people might try to indirectly convince people to generate them commissions by using unclear language. This is also a trick that’s not well-seen by your affiliate networks and the FTC.
These days, there are some WordPress plugins that you can easily install and that will not only show pictures and information about the products or services that you recommend via the API, but they’ll also tell your visitors that they are clicking on an affiliate link. Lasso is an example.
Affiliate disclosure example
Here are several examples that you might want to consider using (you don’t have to use the same words, but you will definitely get a clear message across).
“As an affiliate, I can receive a commission if you purchase through the links on this page.”
“Do note that several (or all) of the links below are affiliate and I can earn a commission if you use them to purchase a product.”
“We earn a commission if you click and purchase through any of the links below. (at no cost to you)”
“I am financially compensated for every purchase that happens through the affiliate links on this page.”
Affiliate disclosure best practices
If you are using a standard disclosure, such as the one provided by Amazon, you don’t have to go out of your way to make anything different. What you do have to do, however, is to include it on all of your posts and pages that might contain affiliate links.
Read more: AccuRanker Tutorial & Review
This also includes the pages where you might have used a plugin for pulling images via the Amazon API (such as AMZImage). Even if you don’t directly recommend any products or include any affiliate links, the image will still lead to a product page, so if someone makes a purchase, you’re basically tricking them if you don’t provide a disclosure.
Using the same disclosure everywhere
If you are worried about duplicate content, there is a trick that you can use to avoid Google penalizing you. You can use an HTML tag and place it before and after each disclosure.
Read more: How to make your WordPress website load faster
If you were to use one of the examples above, it would look something like this:
<!-googleoff: index-> DISCLOSURE <!googleon: index->
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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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