EQUTE — Newly released guidelines show that the Federal Trade Commission is taking aim at bloggers’ pocketbooks, threatening $11,000 in fines per fraudulent post.

The guys over at WebProNews have a good write up of the new rules.

The FTC language is quite straightforward though, any connection between an advertiser and a publisher must be divulged.

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers — connections that consumers would not expect — must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.

Further tweaking the guidelines, the FTC also makes a point to say old tricks to bypass rules will no longer apply.

In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides — which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” — the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.

Since the FTC has brought no case against anyone thus far, it remains to be seen just how strict these rules are. For even the most prodigious floggers, this might only mean a few tweaks to their disclaimer.

How it affects big-name blogs, however, could be more interesting. What seem to be paid posts have been popping up with more frequency across the blogosphere as the recession has advertisers looking to reach farther on the cheap. If these big blogs are forced to divulge payments, free gifts or other perks to their readers, these paid posts could change drastically. Advertisers are less likely to jump on board the blogger’s credibility train, and bloggers will be less likely to trade that credibility for cash and gifts.

Overall though, this could be a good step for everyone and another baby step toward making bloggers reliable sources of news that can (and are) competing with the traditional news media.

EQUTE — The uproar over flogs or fake blogs continues, but who is really responsible for them?

I liken the current Federal Trade Commission crackdown and all out Oprah war on flogs to the banking crisis. Both bring up the question of where is the regulation and who should be doing the regulating?

All along the way from the fake blog to the CPA action, people could have stopped and said, “Well, this doesn’t seem right, maybe I should stop.”

The affiliate marketing writer cold police him or herself, but when it’s a matter of livelihood, are they really going to stop when their storefront site is getting hammered by Lucy’s Juicy Diet and Wally’s White Teeth? Adding pressure to make more commissions from affiliate managers also pushes them to follow the path that works. Sure, one could ask if everyone were jumping off a cliff, would you? Affiliates would likely answer, “Sure, if we’re landing in a big pile of money.”

Then there is the networks, they might throw a line or two into their 40-page terms of service about fake blogs and trademarks. But beyond that, they don’t have the time or resources to wonder where each link is coming from — especially if that link is bringing in money for them and their advertisers. Adding regulation at this point seems logical until you think about how many thousands of new landing pages pop up every day for everything from acai berries, Obama grants, Google money, teeth whitening and all the rest. Unlike entities like Facebook, affiliate networks aren’t going to set up an expensive lander submittal process that would only succeed in making them less money.

Then there is the advertiser, the one visible person that gets a negative image in the eyes of the consumer if they catch on that what they’re reading is a flog. Some advertisers have sought out flogs and stopped them, but more often than not, even the advertiser isn’t going to be eager to cut themselves out of the profit. Perhaps they could send that free trial offer to reviewers and bloggers — which some do — but that means more overhead and putting a lot of trust in the blogger’s hands. If they are hawking acai berries and colon cleanse anyway, do they even want people telling the truth?

So where does that put us? Nobody wants to lose money by quashing flogs altogether, but nobody really likes them. It’s not an easy question to answer, and in the sea of dubious information that is the Internet, aren’t flogs exactly what everybody expects to find?