Tag Archives: Traffic Source

FTC Cracks Down On Free Credit Report Offers

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Free Credit Report offers have been a hot ticket for a long time. From the annoying FreeCreditReport.com jingles on TV to the hundreds (if not thousands) of websites and affiliate offers, people have been making money on this vertical.  However, it might get slightly tougher to convert these offers now that the FTC has passed down a new law.

Effective April 1, 2010, all marketers using the words “free credit report” in any creative (text ad, banner, landing page, email subject line, etc.) must include a large & prominent ( and clickable) disclosure across the top of each page mentioning “free credit reports” that states:

FTC Notice

Yikes.  This is pretty similar to when Google started forcing people promoting ringtones to put “$9.99 per month” right in their text ads.  It definitely hurt marketers, but they found other ways to market the offers.  I think this change is actually worse than that was, because you have to put it right on your landing page or the advertisers have to put it right on their offer page.  It will be there no matter what traffic source you use to get the clicks.

So, is this the end of Free Credit Report offers, or will it simply be another bump on the road to success for crafty marketers?

The Curve Ball

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In the affiliate marketing game, you get thrown some major curve balls.  Usually these only happen once or twice a year, sometimes more in a really bad year.  It’s when the status quo gets shaken up.  Things that you took for granted are either gone or severely changed, and suddenly your income is taking a major hit.  Usually the curve ball happens when a traffic source dries up or gets wise to the ways that you have been exploiting it.

Google loves to throw curve balls in the form of “quality score updates” that destroy your campaigns and take up a bunch of your time.  The latest one was thrown by Facebook after the Techcrunch Scamville Post (sorry Arrington, no link love here) and the follow ups that have been the talk of the industry this entire month.  It’s one thing to hear about it on a blog, and it’s another thing entirely to have it affect your business in a very real way.  As a network owner, the Facebook shakeup certainly put a large dent in our bottom line.

But that’s where my favorite part of the affiliate marketing business comes in: adapting to change. The people in this industry have an uncanny ability to adapt and update their business models to deal with the ever-changing online landscape, and this is no different.  Sure things will be slow for a while, but unlike your Average Joe in a 9 to 5 job, we have power to do something about it.  When Average Joe gets sent a curve ball, like getting laid off for example, it is devastating.  Suddenly his income is gone and he is completely at the mercy of somebody else to get it back.  He has to find another company to hire him and demonstrate to them that he is worth the risk.  All affiliates have to do is reach inside themselves, grab the motivation it takes to get things going again, and get back to work.

That’s why I love this business.  Sometimes it takes a curve ball to realize that there is a whole new opportunity right around the corner, or an income stream that you may have overlooked when your steady campaign was rolling.  At the end of the day, you are in control.  It’s your business and you are the boss.  Even if you are working 80 hours a week for yourself, that’s better than working 40 for someone else.  Next time you are thrown a curve ball, remember the alternative.