“This is the method I used to easily add custom FTC disclosures to the top of every post on my affiliate marketing sites.

After receiving a reminder from the Amazon Associates program on October 18th regarding link disclosures, I decided to bite the bullet and finally put this in place.

The only reason I’d put this off as long as I have was time.

With 9 years experience as an affiliate marketer, I have a good feeling about the things that will positively or negatively impact the results of my sites and I do not believe this change will reduce the number of people who click on the affiliate links in my posts.

I’d also felt comfortable leaving this on the bottom of my to-do list because the FTC website about disclosures implied, for awhile, that the FTC was not actively monitoring blogs and since I put the Amazon disclosure in the sidebar of my sites there was at least some disclosure visible on every page where there were links.

But that Amazon Associates reminder moved this up on my list. I don’t think Amazon will be checking sites for this type of disclosure – they truly only care that we are properly using the one required by the Operating Agreement but before we find ourselves on the wrong side of the FTC we might as well make this change.

I prefer to keep my use of plugins to a minimum and only use a plugin when accomplishing the same thing with my own coding would be overly time-consuming. In this case, an available plugin was the ideal solution because it allowed for more customization of the wording and appearance of the disclosure. I could also choose to exclude the disclosure from showing up on posts where it was not needed.”

Read the whole thing here.