Well the day has finally arrived for affiliates and bloggers.  Last October the FTC announced that bloggers (affiliates) who offer endorsements must disclose any payments they have received from the subjects of their reviews or face penalties of up to $11,000 per violation….or just a stern warning letter.

This didn’t bode well with many bloggers but judging from the enormous amount of feedback the FTC has been pumping onto the Internet the past few months, it seems fairly clear they’re not on a proverbial witch hunt for bloggers.  After all, with millions upon millions of blogs online they couldn’t possibly enforce the rule across the web.

The new FTC rule is solely meant to help consumers make a more educated decision on what products or services they purchase from corporate sponsored bloggers, celebrities and social media venues.  I agree.

This is not a big deal.  If you’re a responsible blogger or affiliate this mandatory disclosure statement should be completely transparent to you.  In my opinion adding a disclosure statement to each paid post or even a page on your blog explaining sponsored posts or paid endorsements, only solidifies your credibility to your subscribers or site visitors.

However, before you even count the money on the table to write a review or endorsement, it’s your responsibility as an affiliate or blogger to get your facts straight first.  Start pumping out misinformed or incorrect information and you’ll tarnish your credibility faster than “The Mike O’malley Show” got canceled on NBC!

*For a full explanation of the new disclosure ruling please visit:

http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf

Only a few months ago we were all promoting this widget like crazy to our fellow bloggers hoping to get tons of referral bloggers before our competition gobbled them up.  Today, the pulse of BlogRush is faint at best these on the NET.  With exceptionally low CTR’s of the social marketing widget reported by high traffic blogs such as problogger.com, doshdosh.com, etc. and general negative feedback from the marketing community this may be the death of BlogRush as we know it.

You’ll notice I’ve also removed the BlogRush widget from my page.  During the 1.5 months I had it posted, it produced less than a .01 CTR.  You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that blows. 

I placed the widget about halfway down my blog just below the fold…probably like 99% of the rest of BlogRusher’s because revenue ads will always trump widgets.  In this location your CTR will be pretty darn low already and your blog posts, when shown on other relevant blogs, will be competing with five (5) other blog posts thereby reducing your CTR by another 20%.Â

Sorry, but if you’ve placed the widget at the top of your blog you’re really just bleeding traffic and revenue.

We’d all like a fancy shmancy widget to magically bring us loads of laser targeted, high quality traffic but in “the real world” widgets are more form/fun then function.  BlogRush, SmartLinks and even MyBlogLog widgets are nothing more than ads that do not benefit the blogger.