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Best Practices For Disclosing Affiliate Status?

by Willing2Learn
3 replies
Hi WF'ers!

I'm creating an autoresponder series for my first foray into the world of article syndication. I've come up with my method for creating messages that I hope will inform and engage my audience nicely.

I'm weaving in the elements of setting expectations and continuity which I've been told are oh so important.

My only sticking point is with weaving in my affiliate disclosure to my future subscribers.

How do you word the fact that you are an affiliate and will be be promoting a few affiliate products to your audience without turning them off or having them think you are just in it for the commissions?

I want to be completely transparent from the beginning, but I also don't want to come off the wrong way.

How do you do it? Any tips?
#affiliate #disclosing #practices #status
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Willing2Learn View Post

    How do you word the fact that you are a an affiliate and will be be promoting a few affiliate products to your audience without turning them off or having them think you are just in it for the commissions?

    I want to be completely transparent from the beginning
    Yes, definitely best to be completely transparent, right from the beginning.

    I'll get in quickly, here, with what might be an idiosyncratic point of view about this. I've always found that the more open I am about it, and the more I discuss the mechanisms and details of affiliate marketing with subscribers, the more sales I make. People love openness and directness and respect you for it.

    Since "trust" and "respect" are what produce affiliate sales, this can only ever be a good thing, in my opinion.

    The great advantage of "discussing it", it seems to me, is that it gives you the opportunity to reassure people that they'll never pay extra for anything by buying it through your affiliate link. If you don't specify this, many people will misunderstand it.

    I have an "affiliate disclaimer" on my sites, but I've written them all myself, and tried to make them a bit amusing, while still legally compliant. (I did this - with some similarly "silly wording" - even on the site I showed Amazon when they originally approved me as an affiliate, and evidently they had no problem with it at all.)

    I also mention it (with a bit of detail) in every "free report" I let subscribers download, and again in the first "proper email" of the series (i.e. not the one just giving them the download-link), and again periodically.

    In short, I try to "make a big thing" out of it. I like it and think it helps my sales.

    Originally Posted by Willing2Learn View Post

    How do you do it? Any tips?
    Here's one of my earlier wordings of an "affiliate disclaimer" from one of my sites no longer in use (there are, or used to be, a couple of other sites which have re-used this wording after I'd posted it here a few years ago: if you see it elsewhere on a site, it's not one of my own sites ) - it's not to everyone's taste, perhaps, but I like this sort of wording, myself ...

    I earn money from this site. Some of the links to products/services provided herein are “affiliate links”. That means that if you click on one of them to go to someone else’s site and you then buy something there, I might be paid a commission on it, but always without it costing you a penny more: anything I’m potentially paid by the businesses from whom you buy on my recommendations comes out of their profits, rather than out of your pocket. That’s money I spend on hosting and maintaining this and other web sites, and even sometimes on such fripperies as manicure. If, therefore, for reasons best known to yourself, you specifically don’t want to contribute to the elegance of my hands, you’d be better off finding the vendor’s web site through Google or in some other way. But I warn you now: if my photo on some future web site then shows me wearing gloves, you may end up feeling guilty about it, so think carefully. This is a legal disclosure and I even included the word “herein”, in the first line, to make it look like one.
    It kind of matches the self-indulgent tone of the wording on my own sites, and my lawyer said it's perfectly "kosher and legitimate".


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    • Profile picture of the author discrat
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      • Profile picture of the author discrat
        Here is another straight from my Autoresponder

        Originally Posted by discrat View Post

        (Disclosure : I will always be open with you and let you know that in my emails I will sometimes recommend products, like above. I do receive a small commission for referring people to these products. But they are no more expensive than if you bought them on your own. I only suggest quality products that I think will benefit you and ones that I have personally tried and found to be of excellent value. )

        - Robert Andrew
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  • Profile picture of the author Willing2Learn
    Thank you Alexa and discrat!

    I want to remain above board with this all. My goal is to establish and maintain a long-term and multiple-purchase relationship with each of my subscribers. So nothing less than the best!
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