Nicole Dean, Jimmy D. Brown’s affiliate manager, just sent an email to all of Jimmy’s affiliates regarding the new FTC rules that go into effect next week, on December 1. There’s one sentence that got my attention:
Anyone who doesn’t abide by the rules will have their affiliate account terminated and will be responsible for any damages caused by their non-compliance.
This blog is about protecting your business, and quite frankly, one “rogue” affiliate can cause a lot of problems for you under the new rules. Adding a similar statement to your affiliate terms of service seems to me to be a good idea and could definitely help protect your business.
As always, run this one past your lawyer first — but if nothing else, it’s a great question to ask the next time you meet. Which will hopefully be before December 1!
Also note that Jimmy isn’t just using the normal “expel you from the program and keep your commissions” argument; instead, he is going to hold rogue affiliates responsible for their actions. That’s one reason I recommend that you talk to a lawyer before adding this to your terms; you may need to word things in a certain way or notify your affiliates in a certain manner in order to make this effective. But you want responsible affiliates, and I think that the general idea is solid.
P.S. — Lest you think that Jimmy D. Brown is a “stick in the mud” or some grumpy old guy who is just trying to protect his backside while shifting the burden of complying with these new rules on his affiliates, I want to make it known that Jimmy and Nicole are among the best people that I have worked with. Jimmy runs almost all of his stuff through ClickBank, which means that you get paid on time, every time — and it would be easy for him to “hide” behind this. Instead, he and Nicole are responsive and helpful and will even go out of their way to help educate their affiliates.
Jimmy personally answered a question for me once (regarding using your own link to purchase a product), and not only did his answer make a lot of sense and opened my eyes to things I had not considered before, it also revealed a lot about Jimmy’s character. They are GREAT people to work with, and I applaud Jimmy for taking steps to preserve both his personal and business integrity. I’m also pretty sure that they will be more than happy to help you should you have specific “Do you think this is OK?” type of questions (although I can’t say that with certainty, they really do want to help their affiliates succeed).
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NOTE: This posts contains affiliate link(s). If you click on the link(s) and purchase something, I will receive a referral commission. It will not have any effect on the purchase price of the product. As a general rule, I do not accept free products for review and my decision to promote these products is based on my own satisfaction with the products after purchasing them and my desire to tell you about high quality products while generating revenue for my business. Any exceptions will be clearly noted. Also keep in mind that I am a college graduate, have considerable work, leadership, and management experience, and have been studying and practicing online marketing since 2004. These factors have a positive impact on my results that you will not be able to replicate. Thanks!
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