Kajabi loves for our Heroes to recommend or endorse Kajabi. However, there are rules that we all must follow when we participate in such marketing.
Learn about FTC guidelines.
In this article:
What is the FTC?
The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC is an independent agency of the United States government whose mission is to protect consumers from anticompetitive, misleading, deceptive, and unfair business practices.
The FTC wants to make sure that consumers are able to differentiate between ad content and organic content. This has become an increasing focus of the FTC especially given the rise of the use of endorsements in social media marketing. Over the past few years, the FTC has expressed growing concern over the lack of transparency in endorsements and affiliate content. According to the FTC, the increased use of endorsements in social media has led to widespread and pervasive deceptive advertising. We want to help make sure we are all doing the right thing.
According to the FTC's rules, paid influencers, endorsers, and affiliates must disclose the nature of their relationships with the brands within their content. Your audience needs to understand whether what they're seeing is an ad or a genuine endorsement, with no monetary gain in it for you. When you are paid or receive free or discounted products or services from Kajabi (for example as a paid affiliate or endorser) these rules apply to you, and even if you're not from the United States, they may still apply.
Violating the FTC's rules can result in penalties, fines, and even legal fees. Unfortunately, just claiming that you didn’t know the rules or you had no intent to violate the rules, is not an argument to avoid these penalties.
Key Requirements
Kajabi knows that reading and understanding the FTC's guidelines can be complicated, which is why we've provided a summary of the key requirements you must meet as a Kajabi affiliate or paid endorser.
However, please know that this summary is based on what we understand about the FTC rules and they are not to be used as legal advice. We recommend that you contact your legal counsel if you have questions or concerns.
The key requirements are:
- Disclosure language must be placed before your link in any and all placements, regardless of the format of the content. It's best practice to place your disclosure above your links at the beginning of your content or as close to the links as possible.
- Disclosures need to be clear and apparent to the reader. In other words, you shouldn’t have to search or click on a link in order to see it.
For example, although placing your disclosure in your website footer meets the requirement of having one, it may be hard to find and thus will not meet the requirement of being displayed clearly and conspicuously. - If you include your endorsement and/or link in any social media posts, you must include the FTC disclosure. You can use hashtags to disclose your relationship with us like #KajabiAffiliate or #Ad.
- If using video, the disclosure should be present in both audio and written form, and not just in the text description.
- Disclosures should always be added, even in cases where space is limited.
- Disclosures should be in the same language as the endorsement.
- If posting from outside the United States, U.S. law applies if it’s reasonably foreseeable that the post will affect U.S. consumers. Foreign laws might also apply, please consult counsel in your local jurisdiction.
FTC Disclosure Examples
If you’re not sure what to put as your disclosure, here are some examples you can use:
- “I am an independent Kajabi affiliate and I receive referral payments from Kajabi in this role.”
- “We receive a commission on purchases made through links on this page/in this email.”
- “If you upgrade and make a purchase through this link, we will receive a commission.”
- “Heads up, we make money if you purchase with this link.”
Additionally, if your referral efforts include claims related to the potential income a Kajabi customer can make, or you make reference to income that you have made using Kajabi or to any lifestyle opportunities you have because of Kajabi, the following guidelines must be adhered to:
- Your statements must be completely true and accurate and supported by evidence
- If you use a hypothetical scenario, you must clearly label it as a hypothetical scenario
- Your statements must be accompanied by a link to the Kajabi Income Disclaimer Statement:
https://kajabi.com/policies/income-disclaimer.
Additional Resources
As mentioned earlier, these are Kajabi’s interpretations based on our understanding of the FTC guidelines and should not be used as legal advice.
Here are a few “Do’s” and “Don’ts” from the FTC:
- Do clearly disclose when you have a financial or family relationship with a brand.
- Do ensure your sponsorship is hard to miss.
- Do treat sponsored tags, including tags in pictures, like any other endorsement.
- On image-only platforms like Snapchat, do superimpose disclosures over the images.
- Don’t assume followers know about all your brand relationships.
- Don’t assume disclosure built into social media platforms is sufficient.
- Don’t use ambiguous disclosures like “Thanks,” #collab, #sp, #spon, or #ambassador.
- Don’t rely on disclosures that people will see only when they click “more”.
When in doubt, visit the following links or reach out to the FTC directly:
And that’s FTC Guidelines! Please vote below and let us know if you found this article helpful. We value your feedback. Thanks for being the best part of Kajabi!