Michel Fortin discusses the implications of the impending new Federal Trade Commission ruling in "Is This The End of Affiliate Marketing?". And while the implications for affiliate programs and affiliates could be far reaching as well, the beginning of the post highlights the problem of testimonials also addressed by the ruling, which DOES have immediate implications for anyone selling coaching/training services or products online (my BOLD highlights):

1) Authen­tic­ity

We must be authen­tic in our claims and tes­ti­mo­ni­als. That’s com­mon sense, and I applaud the rul­ing. But also we must show they are atyp­i­cal, and to but­tress any claim or tes­ti­mo­nial with one that the con­sumer can rea­son­ably expect from using the product.

This, in itself, opens a huge can of worms.

If a prod­uct is new, untested, or not used as intended by the user — which is, sad to say, what the typ­i­cal user fails to do most of the time and over which we have no con­trol — then how can we share what we believe the user will rea­son­ably expect?

Let’s say you sell a diet pill. There is only one way to con­sume it. Plus, there’s only one result. You either lose weight or you don’t. Sim­ple. And in this case, you can carry out sci­en­tific analy­sis to mea­sure the results in order to dis­cover what is typical.

For instance, you sim­ply get 100 peo­ple to take your pill, mea­sure their results, and post the aver­age. And you can make them aware of the aver­age result. Easy, peasy.

But in the case of a mar­ket­ing or business-​​building train­ing pro­gram, which teaches mul­ti­ple strate­gies, mul­ti­ple con­cepts, for mul­ti­ple types of busi­nesses, in mul­ti­ple mar­kets, the prob­lem is that there is no “one size fits all” of using this prod­uct. It’s impossible.

(And most how-​​to or do-​​it-​​yourself infor­ma­tion prod­ucts fall in that category.)

Every sin­gle user of that train­ing pro­gram will have a dif­fer­ent result. There is no such thing as “typ­i­cal.” In fact, by the very exis­tence of such a train­ing pro­gram, all results are atyp­i­cal. So the ques­tion is, how do you com­ply with the new legislation?

That said, if you do offer a one-​​size-​​fits-​​all prod­uct, or one with a sin­gu­lar, mea­sur­able result, then can you sim­ply say, “If used as directed, you should get [typ­i­cal result]?”

Accord­ing to the FTC, you no longer can.

The older rule said that hav­ing a blan­ket dis­claimer (some­where, such as a link at the bot­tom of a sales page), to show that results are atyp­i­cal and that indi­vid­ual results may vary, is no longer pos­si­ble. The FTC says we “no longer have this safe harbor.”

Now, the FTC appears to have backtracked just a little by stating that enforcement would be on a complaint basis, and apply a "three strikes" methodology where you would first be warned, then sent a Cease & Desist order, and only then be fined up to $11,000 (per incident).

But that doesn't leave me with a warm & fuzzy feeling at all. I still think this is a horrible idea, given that complaints can and likely will be launched by competitors, as well as possibly by "professional" shake-down artists with nothing better to do than to scan sites for testimonials. That might make for a great Internet "everyone spying on everyone" system...

So what to do? Preemtively take down all of your testimonials? Prepare to take them down at a moments notice and develop alternatives in the background?

Or is there a way to still use your testimonials if you can write a smart paragraph or two that will highlight:

• the atypicality of any result (as explained by Michel Fortin above),
• natural results skewing according to the 80/20 Principle (around 20% of people will get 80% of the results, which leaves the other 80% of people to "divvy out the remaining 20% of results among them"),
• your hopefully strong guarantee, and gives the refund rate for the product or service ("Any of our clients not satisfied have been free to ask for a prompt and curteous refund, no questions asked. Our refund rate is 6.8%", asf.)?
  

We'll see.

[ This guy over here has an interesting solution to the disclosure/affiliate dilemma (I may post a quote of his post as my own Disclosure policy before long), and a less satisfying one (caving) for the testimonial issue:

http://website-in-a-weekend.net/making-money/testimonials-disclosure-federal-... ]