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:

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?