Continuity and Disclosures - [ Run a Continuity? - Read This ]

[Terry Crim]

Disclaimer: I am NOT an attorney or a qualified legal source. All information in this forum post is for discussion purposes only. I am not giving legal advice and you should NOT use anything in this post on your own sites, those of your clients, friends or JV partners including in your own business. I am giving my own personal opinion and view both of which probably have no legal merit what-so-ever. You Be Warned!

I know there has been other discussion on this I am curious though about this particular question so if this duplicates other threads please feel free to ignore this one.
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Hi,

I just received an email for a service, it is being offered on a continuity program. I have seen MANY membership sites and continuities over the years some of which I helped to create or administered. Most, especially in the Internet Marketing "How To Make Money" Niche either do not have legal disclaimers OR camouflage them to blend in to the page with small print and color change the text to hinder really seeing or reading the text.

There have been quite a few discussions on this and recently with FTC being much more active and going on offensive to seek out scammers and misleading offers on the internet... I just got this email, it was an HTML email, full graphics and was a nice looking offer.

Below the nice Html Layout, with all the graphics and order button in a black background table with WHITE lettering so you can actually read the text and make it popup so you can't dismiss it.


" * [--Cut Out--]... plans will revert to the then current rate after the discount period has ended. Refund limited to first month's subscription fee, must cancel within first 30 days of service to receive refund. All offers, pricing and features subject to change. "


I cut out identifying information and non-relevant parts for this discussion. There was more to this disclaimer.

This was actually on the offer page, directly under the buy button.
Question I have is those of you that run Continuities in the IM niche or any other, why do you either hide, mask or do not have any disclosure on your sales page at all?

Not EVERY continuity provider fails to have or hides disclaimers but a good portion do from what I have seen and I know many of you either participate or lurk here.

Why do you choose to place your disclaimers out of site, or blend them in a way that makes them hardly noticeable? Did you find in your testing that disclaimers hurt conversion?

I am not saying you have to make them 50pt font with flashing arrows... I am not saying you have to make any changes at all. I am just curious why those of you that have and are doing what I describe, (masking disclaimer)... why do you do it?

I am launching several continuities soon and from a marketing stand point wondered what the theory or thought there about disclaimers is.

I am not going to out any names, call any favors or black mail anyone to answer my query. I am just curious.


Also PLEASE Warriors, if you are just going to flame or bash continuity or those that aren't totally open upfront about what all is invlolved in their $1.00 S/H fee to get $25,000 in info product sent please don't reply to this thread.

I am not questioning the tactics or if continuity works... I know for fact it works and it works amazingly well. My focus though is on the actual display of disclaimers that state what they get when they signup and all fees associated after the trial period is over.

Where do you place your disclaimer and why? On a seperate page with a link to it? Where do you place your link? Does the link pop out on the page?

I know about SEO but you can get around that by placing an image of the disclaimer and SEO the image so it doesn't give a hit to SE scores.

I am on a legal kick right now I guess due to preparing for my own launches. What do you suggest from marketing standpoint with regards to disclamers, placement and display?

Legal I pretty much have a grasp of what is required but marketing aspect of... Never tested, haven't had opportunity too.

What do you do and why?


Thank you so much for reading this post.

- Terry

[Barbara Eyre]

Terry,

If it's alright, I'm going to be monitoring this thread as I am at the beginning stages of my first continuity program ... I'm in the research phase ... getting all my ducks in a row ... and this is one of those important points to be taken care correctly from the beginning.

[jasonl70]

The sort of disclaimer you are talking about here seems more like fully explaining what they are signing up for.

Recently Mike Filsaime has been really making an effort to be as transparent as possible regarding this, and it seems to be working out quite well for him.

[Istvan Horvath]

Yes, I agree with jasonl70 - the title is misleading. It is not about "disclaimer", it is about hidden or openly declared continuity.
Hidden continuity sucks. (Sorry, there is no better word for it.)

Make it clear what are they signing up for, make it easy to cancel/unsubscribe and they will love you. Otherwise everybody will hate you and they will come even here to complain about it.

The fact that they subscribe to a continuity (30 days free etc... we know how it works) should NOT be hidden on a disclaimer page. It should be right there next to the PAY HERE button.

P.S. Even marketers who used to abuse earlier the "hidden continuity technique" lately are becoming big promoters of the open version.

[Steve Iser]

Disclaimers do hurt conversions. That's why CPAs paste it at the bottom. It needs to be worded properly without killing conversions.

It's the price you pay on FTC.

Since I promote a lot of CPAs I've split-tested merchant offers that do variations of it on the checkout page.

Hit me up if you want details. But you're honestly blowing it out of proportion IMHO. Just make it obvious there is a recurring and that's that.

[CDarklock]

My understanding is that you're required to have the disclaimer clearly visible to everyone that buys, so I just grit my teeth and take whatever impact it has for sales. It's better than being sued, although after the Enzyte debacle, I'm less inclined to offer continuities in the first place.

[Frank Donovan]

Terry,

I agree with the posters who've queried your use of the term "disclaimer" in the context of a continuity model.

A disclaimer is used to deny responsibility - for example a novel may use a disclaimer that no character is based on a real person or a MMO product may "disclaim" that any purchaser would necessarily achieve the results stated in the sales copy.

With a continuity product, the ongoing charge is, in effect, part of the price. If you wouldn't, generally, relegate the price of a product to a separate page, you shouldn't consider doing that for a continuity disclosure.

I'd suspect that any shortfall in upfront conversions would be more than compensated for by longer-lasting memberships.


Frank

[YellowDot Software]

What I find even worse is web based companies with short office hours and not enough people to answer the phone that demand you call them to cancel your subscription. I like paypal subscriptions cause you can always just log in to your account and cancel em

Make sure your sites have a clear section where people can unsubscribe!

[Terry Crim]

Originally Posted by Frank Donovan

Terry,

I agree with the posters who've queried your use of the term "disclaimer" in the context of a continuity model.

Hi Frank,

I think I understand what you mean, I guess it is more disclosure then disclaimer I probably couldn't think of that word when I made the topic.


I saw this legal verbage under the offer and was impressed by how it was displayed by this particular company and I thought ok, if this company does this why don't IMers do this at least in this obvious upfront way?

I appreciate everyone's input.


Steve,

Yeah I understand where it may look I am blowing this up but really, how many people do you and I both know that do NOT do this? More than do, I can say. At least right now.

I mean look at this snipit of the ad I pasted in my OP.

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" * [--Cut Out--]... plans will revert to the then current rate after the discount period has ended. Refund limited to first month's subscription fee, must cancel within first 30 days of service to receive refund. All offers, pricing and features subject to change. "

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This is not exactly spilling out details but enough that says

Hey, after this trial period you are going to be charged at the normal rate whatever that is at the time.

Now to be transparent this offer I borrowed this from is for a service so it is obvious this is going to be a monthly charge just due to what the product is. BUT in memberships and many other continuity we see this is NOT obvious.

But yeah, like you said just make it obvious there is a monthly charge after the trial.

Thanks everyone that responded so far.


- Terry

[balsimon]

I agree that the term should be disclosure rather than disclaimer... minor point.

More major point: If I were going to run a continuity program it would be copywritten in as a benefit. The price per month (or whatever pay period) would be shown prominently on the sales page and in the order form.

Disclaimers - tos, privacy, etc. - these I link to a central site. But continuity is a major contractual term. It gets shown prominently.

- Bal