Newbie Questions

[greenmama]

I am looking to get into Affiliate Marketing and have been reading up and studying to help me. I thought of a couple questions while researching.

1) How does the new FTC law affect Affiliate Marketers? Do we have to state that we are being paid commission as a blogger does?

2) Has anyone ever been sued by anyone for a product they advertised for? Are we held responsible if someone has a problem with a product or something we are representing?

For example: If an affiliate is campaigning an ebook on natural cures or weight loss secrets and someone gets sick or something from following advice, can the affiliate be held responsible or does it fall on the creator of the product?

3) I assume that Affiliate Marketers are responsible for reporting their own taxes. Does anyone have any tips or know of any software to help keep track of things?

 

[Laura61]

Hi greenmama,

For #1, I would check Linda's posts in the Affiliate Industry News forum. There's a lot of good information, although the first page or so is taken up mostly with the advertising tax issue right now.

I wrote an article too about this: What do the FTC regulations mean for Internet marketers?.

I'll let someone else answer #2.

#3: I use Quickbooks, but once I have everything compiled and organized, I give it to an accountant. QB is great for my purposes.

 

[melovemoney]

For #2 I have definitely never been sued by a product owner or ever heard of anyone getting sued by the product owner, this is definitely a long shot of happening.

As for #1, I think Laura did a great job of answering that.

As for #3 I don't use any software, I just print out my receipts and hand them over to my accountant. But I'm a guy and guys are just unorganized like that

I hear QuickBooks is great, but haven't used it.