It’s official: the government is in the business of fining bloggers who don’t play by their poorly defined rules of disclosure.

Back in June I wrote an article describing how the United States government was gearing up to go after bloggers that don’t disclose income or freebies from companies that they write product or service reviews about. In a nutshell, if I were to write a post extolling the virtues of Walkers Shortbread Cookies, I could be fined $11,000 for not telling my readers that the link I provided is an affiliate link and that I could earn a commission if a reader bought some cookies through that link.

I provide a disclaimer and disclosure statement on a page called Linking Practices. On that page I describe what being an affiliate marketer means and that many of the links on this site are affiliate links. That should be enough to clear me with the Federal Trade Commission, right?

Who knows??

According to a story at Mashable.com, the FTC created rules (they call them guidelines) that are so vague they’d be laughable if the fine wasn’t so extraordinarily high.

It’s eleven grand per post

This site (in its current form) is just over two years old and has 107 published posts. The vast majority don’t have any affiliate links at all, but let’s say, for the sake of the discussion, that they did. The new FTC rules say that they could fine me $11,000 per post, for a grand total of $1,177,000. That’s right, over a million dollars. I have other sites that earn more than this one. This site isn’t a moneymaker for me, it’s something that I enjoy doing and occasionally throw some affiliate links into – I haven’t earned more than a few hundred bucks on it in two years. $11,000 per post? Really?

This begs the question: are past posts subject to these rules? There are blogs with hundreds – thousands – more posts than I have. Do those blog owners need to go back and edit each post to add a disclosure? Are site-wide disclosures, like the one I use on this site, good enough?

Apparently, the FTC isn’t telling.

Fortunately – or unfortunately, as time will tell – this isn’t over. The new rules go into effect December 1st. We’ll see how it shakes out, but I have a feeling the FTC is overstepping itself this time.