The FTC will be monitoring your blog.

Out of the millions of blogs, there are a couple hundred, if not thousand of blogs which dedicate themselves to review products and companies. But what those blogs are not telling you, is whether they are receiving perks from the companies which they claim to review.

If you’re Pedro the gardener and you’re looking you buy yourself a brand new weed wacker, and you see many different weed wackers what do you do? You go to google and search reviews on the product that interests you the most. But in some cases, reviews can be tainted as the blog writer could be receiving gifts from a certain company in order for that company to get a better review, even though that company’s product is not as good as other products might be.

This is why the Federal Trade Commission is going to start keeping their eyes out on blogs.

“If the guidelines are approved, bloggers would have to back up claims and disclose if they’re being compensated – the FTC doesn’t currently plan to specify how. The FTC could order violators to stop and pay restitution to customers, and it could ask the Justice Department to sue for civil penalties.” Says the Washington Post.

Here you can see the very, very, long FTC bill.

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/11/P034520endorsementguides.pdf