If you’re doing word-of-mouth marketing, you should be concerned with the directive and the regulations promulgated to enforce it.

Why?

Your new duties include not to treat consumers “unfairly.” And if you do treat them unfairly, you can end up paying fines or even going to prison.

Here’s one unfair practice that is going to land many Internet marketers in hot water:

“Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer.”

Do you think that creating consumer review sites without disclosing affiliate status will be considered unfair under this provision? I do.

Here’s another one.

“the commercial practice fails to identify its commercial intent, unless this is already apparent from the context”

How many e-mails sent to Internet marketing lists would violate this provision? Every day, you get swamped with affiliate e-mails piking the latest guru product or service but never disclosing that the recommendations are made at least in part because of the affiliate commissions the sender hopes to receive.

You might think that you have nothing to worry about because you don’t live in the United Kingdom.

However, do any of the consumers who visit your website live there? What about those on your e-mail list? Chances are you’ve got United Kingdom visitors who are protected by these new regulations. And more importantly, you have no idea whether you’ll be prosecuted for violating the law.

You can also expect the U.S. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) within the next few years to create new laws and implement similar regulations as part of cleaning up Internet marketing under the guise of protecting consumers.

You can learn more about the United Kingdom regulations by reading the Draft Statutory Instrument: Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

Of course, there’s a mathematical formula behind the score they sell but the number you receive bears no relationship to the real number the exact same credit reporting agency will sell to actual and prospective creditors.

What does this mean to you in the real world?

Let’s say that you buy your credit score online and the number you get is a 680. The number sold to a credit card company, an auto dealer, a prospective mortgage lender, or even a potential landlord might actually be in the 500s. That’s the difference between getting a decent rate on a loan and not even qualifying for one!

Like 3-card monte, you’re being played by credit reporting agencies.

The real number that you want to look at is your FICO score, but as explained by Aleksandra Todorova in Not All Credit Scores Created Equal, even your FICO score can vary depending upon the type of creditor buying the information.

Quite frankly, it is amazing that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hasn’t stepped in and made these clowns actually report your real FICO number, including any variations of it so that you know what you’re dealing with the next time you apply for credit.

In fact, if you’ve been deceived when buying your credit report online, be sure to file a complaint with the FTC about it.

Fortunately, there are reputable email autoresponder services that can help you do the right thing. In particular, I recommend Aweber because of the company’s commitment to obeying the law when sending business email. You can learn about email marketing the correct way by watching one of Aweber’s free live video seminars.

Please note thatin addition to recommending Aweber to my clients, I’ve personally used them for my autoresponder needs for several years and have been extremely satisfied with the company. Watch the email marketing videos and learn what they’re doing right to prevent spam complaints against Internet businesses just like yours.

Having sound business practices consistent with the Golden Rule may just keep you out of trouble with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Why is this important? How much do you value your business and your freedom? Let’s look at some new examples of those who allegedly played fast and loose with deceptive trade practices.

BlueHippo Will Pay Up to $5,000,000 to settle charges.

ValueClick Settles With FTC for $2,900,000.

Founder of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals faces up to 20 years in prison plus forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars.Here are some things that you can do to minimize your risks.

Clearly disclose the terms of sale to your customers. No fine print legalese to take away what you gave in the big bold letters of the sales pitch.

If there’s a continuity program, don’t hide it, and make it easy to opt-out.

If there’s a refund policy (particularly where required by law), obey it. In fact, go the extra mile to make things right.

If there’s a guarantee, honor it. No hassle. No questions asked.

If it is going to take 4 days to ship, tell the customer it will take 7-10 days and let the customer be pleasantly surprised when it arrives early. If you can’t ship on time, offer a prompt refund.

Remember that happy customers don’t file complaints with the FTC or your state attorney general’s consumer protection office.

What’s the importance of this decision? It emphasizes that the federal government will continue to make examples of those who engage in anti-consumer practices. As a general rule, there’s nothing wrong with offers that contain “free” products or services. But that requires clear disclosures so that no one is fooled into thinking the offer has no strings attached. In addition, one needs to pay special attention to the laws governing unsolicited commercial email (spam). No one likes spam. It is bad marketing and it is against the law.

If you have questions about what is legal and isn’t, you should consult your Internet attorney before engaging in an activity online. It doesn’t do your business good to make a profit selling something only to have it taken away in government fines and legal fees defending yourself from allegations of wrongdoing.

Hat tip to InfoWorld.

Let me disclose at the outset that I’m a big fan of the organization in question and was shocked to read about this incident.

If the accusations are true, the organization is exposing itself to legal liability through the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), states’ attorneys general bureaus of consumer protection, and even private lawsuits. Personally, I’m hoping that the prior track record of providing valuable content will dissuade anyone from instigating such proceedings.

Yet even if the organization is not held accountable by law for the alleged misconduct, there the negative word-of-mouth negative publicity serves as judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to sales. The information will not be erased from the Internet — and it will result in lost sales. That’s a shame because there’s a lot of valuable offline and online marketing information one can learn from the organization.

While forced continuity appears to be the flavor of the day for marketing because of profitability, it will probably take the FTC to come down hard on someone for deceptive trade practices before the methods of marketing such programs are cleaned up. If they decide to pick a marketer to make an example of, I just hope it isn’t the one at the center of this controversy.

1. Increased anti-spam enforcement. The one-hit wonders in the info marketing crowd are starting to panic because price points have dropped. Packages that sold for $1500 bucks are lucky to get one-third that amount a year later. Seminar attendance has dropped and the primary attendees are newbies. Pitches are made to these new marketers with the view that there’s one born every minute and hoping the newbie will burnout (like most do) before discovering the get-rich-quick package was a bunch of junk. What does this have to do with spam e-mail? Desperate marketers are intentionally violating the CAN-SPAM Act in order to support a sinking ship. Even reputable marketers are reverting to single opt-in lists instead of double (verified/confirmed) opt-ins because conversion rates are lower with the latter. Some of the worst CAN-SPAM violators are buying launch lists from other marketers, importing the names, and then sending e-mails telling people not to forget about a special bonus for the launch that never was actually part of the launch. These are unsolicited commercial e-mails, i.e. spam. The FTC and/or a few state attorneys general will likely make an example of these spammers. Don’t let it be you.

2. Liability for your affiliates‘ misconduct. Federal and state law enforcement officials routinely hold network marketing (MLM) companies responsible for the misrepresentations made by their commissioned sales associates. If you’re marketing a business opportunity or health-related product on the Internet, look for the government to take a harsher view at what is said on behalf of your product by your affiliates. This includes unsubstantiated income and health claims as well as fake, unsubstantiated or secretly compensated testimonials. In most instances, you as the product creator will have the deep pocket to tap instead of the broke affiliate who misrepresented your product, i.e you’ll be a bigger target.

3. Increased Website content ripoffs. When you can download an entire website and have all of its content re-written, including front e-books and autoresponder sequences, for less than a thousand dollars, look for more people to rip off your sites and do so without legal consequences. While there are ways to take down sites hosted in the U.S., Canada, etc. for infringement, enforcement actions become a big problem when a site is hosted in Asia or Eastern Europe. Internet marketing gurus in the late 1990s were telling everyone to find a successful site and rip it off. When your $97 info product starts selling on a cloned site abroad for $5, that advice is going to hit home in a big way.

4. Taxes and Personal Asset Protection. This issue has the potential to be the number one problem facing Internet marketers in the coming years — it will cost more than one millionaire marketer his entire fortune and some possible time in prison for tax fraud too. What most Internet marketers think they know about this issue is absolutely wrong (because they’ve been sold a pack of lies and half-truths by asset protection charlatans). I’ll be releasing a special report to clients on this issue soon. It won’t be for sale. You’ll have to get it through a client of mine.

However, she overestimates the likelihood that small business owners are going to be injured because they can’t afford to compete with larger competitors for paid stealth links.

Most successful Internet marketers I know are able to do very well in the search engine rankings without paying a dime for links. Of course, they’re not going to share the how-to with everyone.

I encourage you to seriously consider DoFollow for your blog. UPDATE - See comment below.

If you’re using WordPress, you can take care of the spam issue with Lucia’s LinkLove and Spam Karma 2 plugins while rewarding bloggers who provide substantive comments with the links they deserve.

Instead of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the CAN-SPAM Act, the Russians apparently have a different method.

Two spammers have been assassinated since 2005…the most recent was on the receiving end of multiple bullets including one to the head.

Am I advocating vigilante justice? No.

Am I sorry these two cretins died? Nope.

In my book, those who choose to spam as their occupation should permanently lose their online access and be exiled to Siberia without a coat.

Another guy couldn’t figure out how to uninstall software he downloaded.

Wow.

Bring on the ambulance chasers and litigation lotto.

I’m not a big defender of Google. There are some valid complaints against the company (including some posted at Google Watch).

But your tax dollars are being wasted while the government investigates claims like the ones described above. That’s ridiculous.

Here’s a suggestion. The FTC should require a $1,000 filing fee for every complaint. The fee will be refunded if the FTC finds merit to the complaint. If the FTC finds against the complainant, the fee will be kept as a ’stupidity tax’ to discourage other mental midgets from doing the same thing.

It won’t cover the cost of the investigations…but it will give you the satisfaction of knowing that every crank with a grudge can’t spend your tax money hounding a private sector business with government regulators without having to pay at least something for doing so.