Affiliate.com T-Shirts for Haiti

Affiliate.com is doing a blogging contest to raise money for Haiti (and for the winning blogger). To enter the contest you are supposed to take a picture of yourself wearing their latest t-shirt.  I figured, why do that when we could have a showdown of all the other guys that have posed for the contest!  Unfortunately, it appears that the only people that have actually taken a picture of themselves for this contest were Shoemoney and Ian Fernando.  Take your pick*:

Shoemoney rocks the Affiliate.com shirtIan fernando rocks an affiliate.com t-shirt

*There’s not a poll or anything, because polls are lame.

There were also blog posts by a number of the usual crew like Zac Johnson, John “I’m Gonna Lick His Neck” Chow, and Murray Newlands.  Instead of being creative, however, they simply chose to grab the image from the email that Affiliate.com sent out and post it on their blog.  Real creative guys.  If you don’t want to immortalize yourself by doing a gangster pose in an affiliate tee, at least come up with a nifty way to get around it…

On a serious note, if you haven’t donated anything to the relief efforts in Haiti, it only takes a second and you can do it by going to StillerStrong.org or texting “Haiti” to 90999 and charging $10 to your phone bill.  Every little bit counts.  We all make tons of money compared to people living in third world countries, let’s share the wealth a little bit.

Dealing With FTC Rules For Bloggers

Since it is December and the new FTC rules for bloggers have taken effect, I have been looking for the easiest way to make everything compliant.  I know that it’s probably a long shot that the FTC would ever take an interest in my blog, but better safe than sorry, since I found a pretty easy way to do it.  Of course you could write your own custom disclosure like Shoemoney does, but who wants to take the 15 minutes to write it…CMP.lyThat’s where CMP.ly comes in.  They have created a simple way to add the proper disclosure to your page, similar to the URL shorteners that you know and love.  CMP.ly is totally free, and there are 5 levels of their standard disclosure, as well as a custom one that you can create if you want to sign up for an account and take the time to do it.  For most people though, the standard ones will work fine.  They are:

  • CMP.ly/0 – No Connection, Unpaid, My Own Opinions (Legit post)
  • CMP.ly/1 – Based Upon a Review Copy (Review copies plz?)
  • CMP.ly/2 – Given a Sample (Sample of what?)
  • CMP.ly/3 – Paid Post (Zac Johnson’s favorite)
  • CMP.ly/4 – Employee/Shareholder/Business Relationship (Matt Cutts’ favorite)
  • CMP.ly/5 – Affiliate Marketing Links (My favorite)

So it might not be the sexiest thing to spend an hour doing, adding these links to all your blog posts.  But it’s not that much work and it’s definitely not worth it to get busted by the FTC in case some young buck in the department is trying to make a name for himself by taking down the evil affiliate bloggers that are polluting the online world for all the rest of us. (/sarcasm)