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A Home-Based Business Online February 4 Sent to 7,890 Subscribers Editor: Elena Fawkner Publisher: AHBBO Publishing Contact By Email 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 7. 9. 1. Hello again and a warm welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined us since the last issue! The AHBBO feature article from a couple of weeks back got me thinking about today's topic : the content of advertisements we are bombarded with online. Being the recipient of at least my fair share of spam, I'm no longer amazed at the kinds of claims advertisers are prepared to make, just for a quick buck. The reason is simple : desensitization. Expose yourself to something often enough and for long enough and it will soon start to lose its effect on you. So it is with spam and the outrageous claims that too often go hand-in-hand with it. And there's the danger. We become so used to the hype we begin to see it as the natural way to sell on the Internet. We do so at our peril, however, as some of this type of advertising is downright illegal. So, in this week's article, we take a look at what you need to know when advertising online including links to some very handy free online publications from the FTC to guide you in the right direction. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this week's issue. Remember, this ezine is for YOU! If you have comments or suggestions for topics you would like to see addressed, or would just like to share your experiences with other subscribers, I want to hear from you! Please send comments, questions and stories to Contact By Email . (4/4) 2. This is one of those business ideas that was just made for the internet. There are so many online sources of information for genealogists available now, as well as specialized software programs, being a family tree researcher no longer means setting up camp at the major public library in your city. It very much is a business that can be run from the comfort of home. This is, however, a business that requires quite a bit of training before you get started. It's not simply a matter of logging in, typing in a name, date and place of birth and having a person's family tree appear before you. It takes research, knowledge and expertise. Fortunately, all the information you need is available online. Just be prepared to invest substantial time researching the field and learning what's involved. Once you've equipped yourself with the knowledge and skills you need, start by researching your own family tree (or perhaps do this as you're learning) or the family tree of a friend to get practical experience before hanging out your shingle. This is a business that can be promoted both online and offline. Your website should, of course, be geared to generate business but include free, relevant content to attract targeted traffic. Offline, advertise your services in your local Yellow Pages and periodicals relevant to your business as well as placing classified ads in your local newspapers. ------ There are many more ideas like this at the AHBBO Home Business Ideas page at free home based business ideas with more being added all the time. 3. © 2017 Elena Fawkner If you've placed advertising in an ezine, you've no doubt been advised by the publisher of his or her advertising guidelines. Typically these guidelines go something like this: "Six lines, 65 characters per line plus URL/email. No adult, hate,race." Unfortunately, the publisher's guidelines typically don't go on to require that the ad conform with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") guidelines for advertising on the Internet. As a result, many of the classified ads you see in ezines, on classified ad sites and wherever else such ads appear are, simply put, unlawful. In this article, we'll take a look at what the law requires in this area as amplified by the FTC's published guidelines on the subject. And if you're not located in the U.S., don't think they don't apply to you. The laws on deceptive and misleading advertising are very similar from country to country so this discussion probably applies to you too. Even if your country's laws are different, if your ad is going to readers in the U.S. that may be enough to catch you anyway. GENERAL PRINCIPLES The basic legal principles that apply to advertising generally apply equally to advertising on the Internet. There are three: 1. advertising must be truthful and not misleading; 2. advertisers must have substantiation for their claims; and 3. advertisements must not be unfair. TRUTH IN ADVERTISING In its policy statement on deception (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/policystmt/ad-decept.htm) the FTC notes that there are three elements that underlie all deception cases: 1. there is a representation, omission or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer. For example, "false oral or written representations, misleading price claims, sales of hazardous or systematically defective products or services, without adequate disclosures, failure to disclose information regarding pyramid sales, use of bait and switch techniques, failure to perform promised services, and failure to meet warranty obligations"; 2. the perspective of a consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances or, if the representation or practice is directed to a particular group, the perspective of that group acting reasonably; and 3. the representation, omission or practice must be a "material" one. This means it must be likely to affect the consumer's conduct or decision with regard to the product or service. In short, therefore, the Commission will find deception if "there is a representation, omission or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances, to the consumer's detriment". => Role of Disclosures and Disclaimers The FTC places particular emphasis on disclosures and disclaimers when considering whether an advertisement is truthful and not misleading. Now, obviously, in your ezine ad you don't have room to go into all the ins and outs of your product or service. But that's OK because the ad is not really your sales pitch, it's what you use to try and generate a click through to your sales pitch. That's not to say that anything goes in your classified ad and that it's only your sales letter that you need to be careful with. Try using a headline like "MAKE $60,000 IN 60 DAYS" when the product you're promoting sells for $20 a pop and you yourself are lucky to make one sale a week and see how far that gets you with the FTC. But most "reasonable" consumers recognize puffery when they see it and will not be deceived into believing a product or service referred to in an ad with a headline like "CHANGE YOUR LIFE TODAY!" is, in fact, a magic wand. But when it comes to your salesletter or website, watch out. This is where you need to be very careful about your representations, and include appropriate disclaimers and disclosures where necessary. Here's the FTC's guidelines for effective disclosures: "Disclosures that are required to prevent an ad from being misleading ... must be clear and conspicuous. In evaluating whether disclosures are likely to be clear and conspicuous in online ads, advertisers should consider the placement of the disclosure in an ad and its proximity to the relevant claim. Additional considerations include the prominence of the disclosure, whether items in other parts of the ad distract attention from the disclosure; whether the ad is so lengthy that the disclosure needs to be repeated; whether disclosures in audio messages are presented in an adequate volume and cadence and visual disclosures appear for a sufficient duration; and, whether the language of the disclosure is understandable to the intended audience." => Content of Disclosures and Disclaimers Advertisers are required to identify all express and implied claims that the ad conveys to consumers and, when doing so, focus on the overall impression of the ad and not just individual phrases or statements. If those claims are likely to be misleading to the "reasonable" consumer, then the advertiser must disclose qualifying information to remove any possibility of deception. Such qualifying information must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously in a place where the reader of the claim will see either the qualification itself or a prominent link to it. Note also that a disclosure only qualifies or limits a claim to prevent it creating a misleading impression. It CANNOT cure a false claim. If the disclosure contradicts the claim, the claim itself must be modified for it is deceptive. For a full copy of the FTC's "Dot Com Disclosures" guidelines, visit . SUBSTANTIATION OF CLAIMS If you claim that by purchasing your new viral marketing product, the consumer can generate $50,000 in 60 days in additional revenues, you'd better have a reasonable basis for doing so. In other words, when you get an informal access letter from the FTC asking for substantiation (or, if you fail to respond, a formal civil investigative demand), be prepared to produce documents and records that provide support for your claim that your consumer's revenues will increase $50,000 in 60 days as a direct result of purchasing and using your product. If you could not provide, if asked to do so, substantiation for a claim you intend to make in your online ad, it is misleading to include it. The kind of evidence needed for substantiation depends on the claim. A claim such as "9 out of 10 women lost an average of 10 pounds in two seeks while taking ABC- Metabolizer" will require competent and reliable *scientific* evidence. Letters from satisfied customers do NOT constitute adequate substantiation for this purpose. FAIRNESS IN ADVERTISING According to the FTC's policy statement on unfairness, to justify a finding of unfairness, the injury to the consumer must satisfy three tests: 1. it must be substantial; 2. it must not be outweighed by any countervailing benefits to consumers or competition; and 3. it must be an injury that the consumer him or herself could not reasonably have avoided. => Substantial "Substantial" means more than trivial or merely speculative. As the FTC notes, "In most cases a substantial injury involves monetary harm, as when sellers coerce consumers into purchasing unwanted goods or services". On the other hand, "emotional impact or other more subjective types of harm ... will not ordinarily make a practice unfair." So, the mere fact that an ad is sexist, for example, and as a result offends some members of the community, will not, without more, render the advertisement "unfair" for the FTC's purposes. => Countervailing Benefits to Consumers or Competition It is possible for an injury to be outweighed by higher interests. An example the FTC cites is a case in point: "A seller's failure to present complex technical data on his product may lessen a consumer's ability to choose, ... but may also reduce the initial price he must pay for the article. The Commission is aware of these tradeoffs and will not find that a practice unfairly injures consumers unless it is injurious in its net effects." => Injury the Consumer Could Not Reasonably Have Avoided There is a fine line between freedom of choice and regulatory intervention. Consumers are expected to survey the market and the available alternatives and to make an informed purchase decision. The Commission will generally only get involved where certain sales techniques operate to interfere with the consumer's ability to effectively make his or her own decisions. FTC examples of these types of sales techniques include exercising undue influence over highly susceptible classes of purchasers such as promoting fraudulent "cures" to seriously ill cancer patients or dismantling a home appliance for "inspection" and refusing to reassemble it until the consumer signs a service contract. For a full copy of the FTC's policy statement on unfairness, see http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/policystmt/ad-unfair.htm . OTHER ISSUES => Refunds Refunds must be made to dissatisfied customers if you promised to make them. => Franchises and Business Opportunity Rule If you are selling a franchise or a business opportunity, you must give consumers a detailed disclosure document at least 10 days before the consumer pays any money or commits to a purchase. => Multi-Level Marketing MLMs should pay commissions for the retail sale of goods or services, NOT for recruiting new distributors (pyramid schemes). => Free Products If a product is advertised for free if another product is purchased, the consumer must pay nothing for the one item and no more than the regular price for the other. Such ads should describe all the terms and conditions of the free offer clearly and prominently. => Jewelry The FTC has a Jewelry Guide about how to make accurate and truthful claims about jewelry you offer for sale. => Mail and Telephone Orders Under the Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule, you must have a reasonable basis for stating or implying that a product will be shipped within a certain period of time. If not, you are implying that you can ship within 30 days and you must have a reasonable basis for such implication. There are various other rules that may impact on your business including 900 numbers, telemarketing, testimonials and endorsements, warranties and guarantees and the like. For more information on these and other topics, see the FTC's publication "Advertising and Marketing on the Internet: Rules of the Road" at . PENALTIES The penalties imposed by the FTC against companies or individuals (via state mirroring legislation) that run a false or deceptive ad depend on the nature of the violation. Here are the possibilities: => These are legally binding orders that require the company to stop running the offending ad or engaging in the deceptive practice, to have substantiation for claims in future ads, to report periodically to the FTC about such substantiation and to pay a fine of $11,000 per day if the company violates the law in the future. => => => One effect of the prevalence of spam on the Internet that I have not heard mentioned before is that it desensitizes us to outrageous advertising claims. We EXPECT to see claims such as "make $60,000 in 60 days" even though we have conditioned ourselves to ignore them. The danger, though, is the fact that we ARE so desensitized that it's almost second nature to "reach" when writing our own ads. It's easy to gild the lily, to make our opportunity, product or service sound a bit bigger and better than it really is. That's the nature of advertising after all. But on the Internet, we have to be more careful than the offline advertiser. Only on the Internet it seems, has hype been elevated to such an art form, so much so that we begin to think that we must do the same if our ad is to be noticed. The challenge for us all, then, is to write winning ads that draw the attention of the reader while at the same time refraining from making claims that the reasonable reader may be misled by and by being fully prepared and able to substantiate any claims made. By following these, in essence common sense, principles, we will go a long way to ensuring that OUR advertising practices don't attract the attention of the wrong people! ------ use the autoresponder copy which contains a resource box; and (2) you leave the resource box intact. 4. TIP #1: Speed up the programs you use the most. Using the improved version of disk defragmenter that comes with Windows 98, you can speed up the startup of programs you use all the time. The new defragmenter has the ability to rearrange stuff on your hard drive, moving frequently used programs to faster parts of your disk. Run Disk Defragmenter by clicking Start, then select Programs, Accessories, System Tools and then Disk Defragmenter. Be sure you select the option labeled Rearrange program files so my programs start faster. Then start the process. Load time for my most frequently used program has decreased by three seconds. Not bad! Of course, "results will vary." TIP #2: Freeing up drive space. Are you trying to free up some extra drive space, and need a new corner to tackle? Go after this one. It's super easy. On your hard drive there's a folder named 'C:\Windows\Recent' which lists links to recently used files. If you need to save some disk space, clear out this folder. It contains only links, so feel free to delete what you find there. You won't save a ton of space, but if you're a fastidious cleanser, this may be just what you're looking for. Besides, who wants scraps of stuff lying about on their hard drive, anyway? I'd prefer junk stood about, myself. ------ Tips by Tom Glander and Joe Robson of The Newbie Club. The best Newbie Site ever to hit the Web. INTRODUCING ... COOKIE CUTTER'S BIG BROTHER! Did you miss out on the Cookie Cutter wave? Then DON'T miss out on this one! Cookie Cutter's big brother, THE NEWBIE GUIDE, is finally here. Get EVERYTHING you need to know, soup to nuts, to make SERIOUS money on the Internet, a great product to SELL and a way to get PAID, all in one easy package. Don't let THIS one pass you by. ACT NOW! 5. Anna Aagaard writes: "Dear Elena, "I'd like to tell you and your readers about a new web site that my husband and I have designed. It is called In Her Prime "Sometime last year, I got the idea to create a magazine for women over 40. I was tired of all the typical glitzy women's magazines I saw in supermarkets. I wanted something that would appeal to me, at my age (44) and other women like me, with meaningful articles on a variety of women's midlife issues. "I couldn't find anything that met my needs on the news stands, so I started researching how to create a publication of my own. I quickly found out that it is very expensive and risky to start a paper magazine, but I kept the idea in my head and talked to my husband about it over the summer, shaping and reshaping how I could go about it. "Finally, we came up with a solution. We decided to combine our talents and create a web site and e-magazine for women over 40. My husband had a lot of the technical expertise and I had the ideas and desire to do this as a project. We started to investigate other web sites and connect with people who could help us. "We agreed on a domain name paid to register it. We bought a web design program and my husband taught himself how to use it to design our site. I researched e-zines and internet newsletters. We looked at what was out there and tried to do something a little different. "After much research, we decided our site would have a free section and a paid 'members' section. The free section would have a comprehensive links library covering numerous topics of interest to women over 40, along with a discussion forum and a books page linked to Amazon.com. "The paid section would be our subscription e-magazine with a variety of articles that would appeal to midlife women. To test out our ideas, we invited a number of women to become part of a 'focus group' so we could see if our site would be appealing to them. We asked them a variety of questions about their use of the internet, their interests and their needs. "As the plans for our site became more complex, we realized that we would need to have it hosted on a secure server and after much investigation, we selected one that we thought would serve our purpose. "We spent hours combing the web for good sites to list in our links library, and an equal amount of time contacting all of those sites to ask permission to put their links on our site. We felt this was good web etiquette, and it enabled us to interface with a wide variety of interesting people out there in cyber land. "Our links library is an ongoing project and we are always on the lookout for new sites to add to it. We wanted any midlife woman who visited our site to instantly have free access to a wealth of organized information to meet many of her needs. "In addition, we hoped our subscription e-magazine would give that added touch, with topical, stimulating and humorous articles for women over 40. We investigated e-commerce and connected with a company that could provide it for us so we could sell subscriptions to our magazine. Fortunately, we had a friend in Texas who had extensive experience in web site development and he helped us activate usernames and passwords for our prospective customers. "Of course, we needed articles to put in our e-magazine, but by this point, we had made so many connections through the internet, that we had little trouble finding material to use. We now get some articles for free ( good advertising for the writer and her site), and we pay to have other articles written or to obtain reprint permission for them. "Based on the input from our focus group, we made our e-magazine bi-monthly, so we will put out 6 issues per year. The January/February issue is now online and it has some great articles in it! "We are very happy with it and hope other people will be as well. We invite your readers to visit our site and tell us what they think of it. "Sincerely, Anna Aagaard Editor-in-Chief ------ If you want your site seen by thousands, write and tell me about it! But make sure it's one you've created yourself or have had created especially for you. No self-replicating affiliate sites please. 7. Subscription Management To SUBSCRIBE to this Newsletter:
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9. Contact Information Elena Fawkner, Editor A Home-Based Business Online Contact By Email |
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