The new FTC guidelines regarding endorsements and testimonials and how they affect bloggers and marketers has been a brewing story since late Summer 09′. Frankly, after doing an interview on the subject in August my “BS antenna” have been up at attention awaiting the Marketplace Molesters to use this to drain money out of your pockets with promises of protection.

With the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) new guidelines going into effect on December 1, 2009, scam artists, Internet marketers and even some attorneys are trying to sell bloggers, affiliate marketers and website owners like you products and services that could actually get you into MORE trouble with the FTC.

Whether these people are honestly trying to help, or knowingly are misleading you and millions of others in the hope of short-term profits — it doesn’t really matter. The facts of the FTC guides are what matter.

Although I’m not an attorney (nor do I play one on TV or sing like one in the shower) this thorough overview of the new FTC Guidelines on endorsements and testimonials will help you understand what your new responsibilities and potential liabilities are.

The marketing approaches you use, the products you produce or promote, and your own business structure are unique.  You need to be armed with the facts so you can make the best decision and take the action that’s right for you.

The new FTC guidelines on endorsements & testimonials: the facts you need to know

Watch this video to learn what’s new, what some of your new responsibilities are, and what you can do to actually use the new FTC guidelines to gain an advantage over your competitors.

Straight from the horses mouth . . .

As I shared in the video above, there are several things you can do to protect yourself short of hiring an attorney to draft custom disclaimers for you to use on your site and documents to use with your affiliates. The best thing beign reviewing the new FTC guidelines yourself.

Download the new FTC guide on endorsements and testimonials here

Videos from the FTC that answer some of the top questions online marketers have

Why new guidelines now?

What do the new FTC guidelines mean for bloggers?

How do bloggers follow the new FTC guidelines on endorsements & testimonials?

Does the FTC intend to chase down & sue bloggers?

Additional legal reviews on the new FTC guidelines for your reference

• New FTC Blog Guidelines affect companies without blogs

• “New Media” Provisions of Revised FTC Endorsement and Testimonial Guides

• FTC Rolls Out New Guidelines for Endorsements and Testimonials

What’s your take?

• So what do you think about the new FTC guidelines on endorsements and testimonials? Fair? Unfair?

• Is this just another instance of the government sticking it’s nose into the private sector trying to exert control over New Media?

• Are most consumers adults capable of making their own decisions? Or do most people REALLY need to be treated like children being warned about every little thing?

• What are you going to do to protect yourself against the finger-pointing of consumers and the wrath of the FTC?

Talk back and share your psychological graffiti in a comment below.

Want to dominate your niche and look like you’re the only game in town? Building your New Media Marketing Wheel is the way to do it.

In this video training you’ll learn how to overcome the five common challenges stopping most entrepreneurs from ever generating a fraction of the leads they could online. And you’ll learn the what, why AND how of growing your business in today’s New Media marketplace.

Imagine showing up in the search engines so prominently that you look like the only doctor, attorney, gym or health food store in your town. Wouldn’t it be great to be positioned as the leading fitness trainer, Realtor, roofing contractor or consultant in your niche or geographic area? Wouldn’t you be happy to find a continuous flow of new qualified leads coming in to your voicemail and email when you walk into your office each day?

Here’s how you can make it happen . . .

The New Media Marketing Wheel

Download the New Media Marketing Wheel PDF

*NOTE: this is a large image-heavy PDF so please be patient as it loads. It may take up to a minute depending on your internet connection speed.

What’s your take-away?

After watching the video training and taking notes, what’s your take-away?

• What part of the New Media Marketing wheel do you like the most?

• With what you learned, what’s been missing in the marketing of your business online up until now?

• What are you going to do to immediately get you New Media Marketing wheel rolling for you?

Talk back below in a comment and share your thoughts.

A BIG thanks to all our QuanSite Affiliates who helped make our launch a successful event. We appreciate all the work you do in helping us spread the word about QuanSite. As you heard today, we’re making a few changes in the upcoming months so be sure to stay tuned for some exciting new in the New Year. We’ve got a few more tricks up our sleeves that will knock your socks off! If you missed today’s call, here’s a quick recap of what was covered:

• Why you should update your old BLOGi360 links: In our last affiliate call (held September 29th) we stressed the importance of registering for a new affiliate ID.  A few of you have not yet signed up so please be sure to visit http://quansite.com/jamaffiliates to create your new profile now.  If you’re a new affiliate, having joined October 1st or later, you already have the updated links.
• How to create your own promotional blog posts and other materials that will help you educate your leads so that they quickly become fans of the QuanSite System

We also covered how to use your affiliate link to refer leads to a post on QuanSite.net.
The magic formula is (youraffiliateID)&jxURL=(the full URL of the post on QuanSite.net)

For example: http://www.quansite.com/jamaffiliates/id/2002&jxURL=http://www.quansite.net/blog/quansitetv-replay-selling-with-online-video-quansite/

If you’re not an affiliate and would like to join our affiliate program, be sure to signup at http://quansite.com/jamaffiliates.

To access the replay, press play on the player below.

Play Now:

 QuanSite Affiliate Call November 29, 2009: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The QuanSite team has been busy working away on a huge re-brand and launch project for the past four months.  Now that we’re comfortably 30-days into the release of the QuanSite system, we thought we’d share some of the tips and strategies behind the launch so that you could benefit from our experience.

This isn’t the first time we’ve been involved with a product launch, but every time we go through a launch we pick up a few new tricks. this time was no exception, especially since this was software.

Product launch lessons learned:

1. No matter how much time you give yourself for a launch, it’s never enough.

Expect many sleepless nights and last minute things that need to be taken care of. You can minimize the impact of the little things by planning out your launch two or three weeks in advance.

Set goals and milestones and appoint one person to keep you on track or use an online project management service like Basecamp to keep track of the things that sleep deprivation might cause you to overlook.

Takeaway tip: if you are planning a simple product launch (like a downloadable product, e-book etc.) add 20% to your projected timeline. So for example, if you are figuring it will take you a month to fully prepare for release, you’d add a week to your timeline.

If your product is more complex, like a big physical product, a book promotion or software) add 40% to your projected timeline.

If you’ve never done a fully promoted release of a new product and a marketing launch; A) get professional help from a coach or mentor who has done them B) double the percentage above even with professional assistance.

2. Test, test, test and then test again!

In addition to testing your the functionality of your product (if it’s a software product like QuanSite), you need to test the sales process from start to finish… many times in all browsers before you launch. Make sure people can order and pay via credit card (or paypal if you offer that option).  Make sure they can reach the download page and can download the product. Make sure they know how to reach support if they have a problem. Test everything! Twice. And then test again!

Takeaway Tip: When testing anything to do with sales or marketing, change ONLY ONE THING at a time. For example if you want to make several changes to your sales copy, don’t make all the changes at once. If you do and conversions do improve you won’t know what worked.

There is a caveat to this rule. If your marketing/sales process is failing to convert at all and you have a mentor or professional copywriter look at your marketing materials and they tell you “a truckload of Viagra won’t revive this copy” — then change it all at once as quickly as possible.

3. Minimize technical glitches by planning ahead.

Nothing is more frustrating than having your sales site go down during a launch, especially when it means a loss of potential sales. Nothing is more embarrassing than having to tell a JV Partner they didn’t earn as much as they could have during the launch because your sales site was unreachable.

The QuanSite.com launch team planned for the increase in traffic by installing additional RAM on the main sales server and caching parts of the salespage. We also had our server admin monitoring the server during high load periods and the technical team was ready to implement “Plan B” within 20 minutes should something go awry.

4. Make sure customer support is on hand during the launch period.

The support team should be on hand to deal with any issues as they arise. Both technical support to manage server issues and the customer support team to manage any new customer questions. The first few days after a product purchase can make or break a new customer relationship.

Make sure the entire team is up to speed on the offer(s) on your salespage, the included bonuses and where to get them, know how to answer common new member questions (where are my bonuses, I can’t login, etc.), as well as know the escalation path should they need to raise an issue to a Customer Support Manager or the technical team.

Takeaway Tip: Using a program like Kayako Support Suite can add tremendous value to your launch and increase response time and monitoring of customer service inquiries.

5. Set clear and actionable goals.

How do you define success? What’s your measure of a successful launch?  The QuanSite.com launch team had very specific goals and milestones that needed to be achieved and timelines for achieving them. We also closely monitored hourly and daily sales and reacted quickly if there was a dip in sales as it could indicate a potential technical problem.

6. Review & revise

Once you’re on the other side of the launch, comfortably on the other side of the launch (so not the next day!) sit down with your team and review the launch process.

Even if you’re an old hand at launches, you can learn something new from each one. Analyze all online, offline and marketing systems.

- Did you meet your goals?

- Were there any customer service problems that indicate a hole in your sales process?

- Or your support process or even training if your product requires training?

- Was your team proactive and responsive and anticipate issues before they arose?

By analyzing the launch a few weeks past the crunch period, you’ll be able to improve your systems and processes and ensure an even greater launch next time… and maybe a little bit more sleep!

Takeaway Tip: a thorough strategic review of what happened that you didn’t expect, what didn’t happen that you did expect and how actual results line up with your goals will not only help with your next launch. If this is a product that stays on the market for sale (as most products will) then this Review & Revise process reveals gaps in your sales process where you are leaving money on the table.

For example; if 2 out of 5 new clients requested an additional service that you didn’t offer in association with this product, then adding it as an upsell will not only satisfy those clients, it will get others who were not yet thinking about that service take it as an add-on too.

The result is your clients feel well-served, you win them over as raving PAYING fans . . . and you put more money in your pocket with very little effort.

So what do you think?

Got some good ideas from the lessons learned and takeaway tips above? Do you have some tips of your own to share on product launches you’ve done yourself or seen done by others?

Share your thoughts, ideas or feedback in some graffiti down below in a comment.

We’re back with the final part of last week’s webinar.  If you’re new to the QuanSite system, be sure to join us this evening at 7 PM ET / 4 PM PT for our new member orientation webinar.  iDeborah will be on hand to give you a technical “how to” overview of the QuanSite system and answer your questions about the basic features within the QuanSite system.  You can register for the webinar by visiting: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/664269371

Getting Started With QuanSite Part IV

In Part IV of the webinar, we discuss:

• How to write an engaging blog
• Integrating your QuanSite with 1ShoppingCart or Paypal
• Promoting affiliate products using QuanSite
• How offline business owners, doctors, lawyers and other professionals can use QuanSite
• The QuanSite AMP’d program
• How to choose a good domain name

We’re currently applying another patch to the system. It contains the following:

1) Addition of Add Link menu item under “System” (it was missing since the upgrade so there was no way to get to this page )

2) Addition of Add a user menu item under “System” for the same reason as above.

3) re-ordering of items under Bonus Materials on the admin dashboard.

4) Edit of 2 emails that had wrong sender name in email sent by the spam karma function

5) Removing “color scheme” option under profile section (because it was not an option that should have been made available ).

The patch name version is 4.0.1.5 if you don’t have this version number indicated in the footer of your QuanSite admin area, please open a help desk ticket.

Here’s another segment from the strategic webinar held last week with Coach Deb & JP Micek.  If you missed Part I, you can catch the replay at http://www.quansite.net/blog/webinar-getstarted1/.  Part II is at http://www.quansite.net/blog/webinar-getstarted2/.

Getting Started With QuanSite Part III

In Part III of the webinar, we’ll discuss:

• the difference between a squeeze page and a hub site
• using video and the OTO (one-time-offer) feature on the home page
• split testing with Google analytics and a new feature coming soon to QuanSite

We’re applying a patch to the system that fixes a few issues:

1) Fixes missing right-hand side widgets not appearing in the create a blog page section

2) Fixes an issue on the Social Bookmarking Robot settings page where if you checked an option, you couldn’t un-check it, it reverted back.

3) Change to default audio player default image

4) Fix missing pages in setup angel.

You’ll know if your site received this patch by looking in the footer of your QuanSite’s admin area, it should read: Quansite – Version: 4.0.1.0

We’re still working on fixing a few other minor issues, keep an eye out for another update soon.

We’re back with another segment from the marathon strategic member training session hosted by Coach Deb and JP Micek last week.  If you missed Part I, you can find it at http://www.quansite.net/blog/webinar-getstarted1/ The previous session dealt with setting up your QuanSite, how a QuanSite differs from a static site and using your QuanSite to promote a book.

Getting Started with QuanSite Part II:

In Part II of the webinar training, you’ll discover:

• How many sites you should be building at the same time
• What’s the quickest way to familiarize yourself with QuanSite
• Strategies for setting up a capture page and ethical bribe