As I said in response to your other similar message, the FTC’s actions seem to show that they feel that existing guidelines are inadequate to go after Internet Marketers.

Otherwise I would think they’d be spending their time working on prosecuting not changing the guidelines so the government could prosecute.

Which suggest to me that the laws and guidelines read that if something isn’t explicitly said then it isn’t illegal.

Of course, there may be other laws that explicitly exempt the Internet but again, I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know the intricacies of all these laws and guidelines.

David

Do not depend on this type of thinking!! You are already “behind the curve”.

This type of misinformation and bad advice is just what should be targeted.

The FTC has never explicitly excluded the “New Media” from this. Non-disclosure has been illegal in the US, regardless of the media used, for quite some time.

Many other Con-Artist like tactics used by internet marketers are just as illegal, it may be time to clean up. The current administration is going to need every revenue source it can find.

Thanks.

I know what you mean about making the fine print so light. Sets off alarms immediately!

I just highlight it with my mouse and then it really easy to read

Good luck with you site.

David

I accidentally happened upon your site while researching information about membership sites on google. I’m glad I did. Looks like you provide some great information here and I’m happy to find other marketers that don’t try to HIDE the facts of what their offer REALLY is. I’ve personally been very close to being duped into forced continuity programs quite a few times when trying to get a free download or another. Fortunately, I’m the kind of person that DOES read the FINE print (even when it’s grayed out so lightly you have to strain your eyes to see it – I hate that).

And YES, you can definitely run a forced continuity program through PayPal. Many scripts do this for you these days. In fact, that’s exactly why I was researching membership sites myself as I have a few scripts which allow for “trial” memberships. While I love these features, I wanted to check into all the legalities before launching a site of my own. Fortunately, I don’t see any problem with what I plan on doing since members will know up front that the trial membership is just that, a TRIAL and they will be billed a monthly priced IF and ONLY IF, they choose NOT to cancel their subscription.

No tricks or gimmicks on my end. I hate it when people do it to me so I would never do it to others.

Thanks for such an informative blog.

Matt

I went and watched your video. Nicely done and well thought out, thanks for putting in the link to it.

Personally, I’m not opposed to forced continuity but I am VERY opposed to hiding it, either non-existent or in small print at the bottom.

If a product/offer isn’t good enough to support the being upfront about the forced continuity being part of the “cost” then the person needs to fix that problem not try to trick people into signing up.

Thanks again for the link to the video.

David

P.S. By the way, I’m pretty sure you can set up a forced continuity system with PayPal but I do agree with you it is so much easier to cancel a PayPal subscription than the other options, particularly with the recent user interface change.

Yes, I’ve also blogged and videos against forced continuity. See:

http://www.marketingsparks.com/forced-continuity-is-it-ethical/

You’re very welcome. I’ll be tracking these issues so if I have any updates I let you know.

David

Thank you very much!