FTC Wants Bloggers to Expose if they got Paid to Review a Product

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How to Earn Money from Blogging

Today it seems that everybody has a blog and spends part of their day and week blogging away. Many people have more than one blog, and some even have dozens. But the truth is that few people really have mastered the concept of making money from their blog. If you want to learn how to earn money from.... More »

Bloggers have been getting free items or getting reimbursed for doing product reviews for awhile now. They would test out the item and review it on their blog. They were sometimes paid to give a positive review whether they thought the item should have gotten a good review or not. This information was not disclosed in the review.

People search online for product reviews more and more. They want to know if they should spend their money on a product. They want true product reviews. They do not want to read how great an item is only to find out it’s junk.

This is where the FTC is going to come in. They want to make it a requirement that bloggers expose if they have been paid or reimbursed in any form to give a positive review. They want bloggers to be fined up to $11,000 per blog entry for not exposing this information.

This has the blogger world up in arms. They are questioning the government regulating blog posts. This could take away business from bloggers. Companies are not going to be paying them to do reviews when the public is not going to take that review seriously since it was paid for.

The bottom line is if you got anything in return for a product review on your blog you are going to have to be upfront with the readers. What are your thoughts? Do you think bloggers should have to reveal whether or not they have been compensated for their blog entry?