In this world there are three great lies:
…….. 1. The check is in the mail,
…….. 2. You’re the first, and
…….. 3. I’m from the government… I’m here to help you.

The first two lies can often be avoided if you keep your wits about you, but that third lie shares much in common with so-called ‘acts of God’ (once either of them starts rolling in your direction, there’s usually no way to stop them). You’ll probably need to either step lively to get out of their way, or grit your teeth and try to ride it out.

Today, guest columnist Russ Hamel treats us to his interpretation of a recent set of “guidelines” being prepared by the US Federal Trade Commission. I don’t want to spoil the impact of Russ’s delightfully warped humor, nor his skewering of goofy policies, so I won’t say more. Just read and enjoy.

Be Advised: The Walmart Greeter Makes Money Off YOU!
By Russ Hamel

And You Thought Ads Were Annoying

The big problem used to be that advertisements littered the landscape. You couldn’t turn your attention ANYWHERE without being blasted with an ad for something or other.

But the world just keeps getting crazier and crazier. Disclaimers -you know the teeny 2-point font print and the super-fast talking you see and hear at the end of advertisements – are now becoming more prominent than the ads themselves. In fact, by law they now HAVE to be!

The Mother of All Horror Stories

Maggie and I went to our local Walmart the other day to pick up a few items. As we approached the store we noticed people being funneled through a new entrance – a sort of tunnel-like structure in front of the main door. A sign, printed in bold letters that could be easily seen from the parking lot read, “Please Be Advised: Walmart Greeters Make Money Off You!”

The buzz from the commotion was deafening as we entered the tunnel. The Greeter, instead of the usual smile and ‘Hello’ now handed us a flyer which stated, “Part of every purchase you make in this store goes to paying my wages. Thank you for your patronage.” The Greeter looked apologetic… correction, he was humiliated to have to hand out such a disclaimer. After all, he was barely making minimum wage.

It got worse when we entered the store. Signs that used to boast Walmart’s competitively low prices were now replaced with more disclaimers about who was making money off our purchases. In every department, Sales Associates were specifically named along with the percentage of their ‘cut’.

However, what REALLY caught our attention were the flashing-light displays strategically placed over each check-out counter which read, “We will now ask you to pay for the items you bring to this cashier. Most importantly, you need to know that all the people working in this store are making money off you… including the Greeter!”

Most shoppers were stunned. Many were outraged. Cries of, “We KNEW there was a scam going on here!” rang throughout the store. Others chimed, “Thank GOD the FTC stepped in and made these people fess up! Can you imagine… that Greeter almost made money off me!”

Don’t Look Now…

OK Russy, what the HELL have you been smokin’? It must be some real heavy-duty @#$% to come up with such an outlandish fabrication!

Ya got me there, pardner! So we’re not at the Walmart stage… YET! But the scenario I speak of above is no tall tale. It is reality TODAY. And the scariest part is that it could very well lead to Walmart and ALL your favorite stores tomorrow!

I’m a blogger. I also write articles which I submit to major distributors on the Internet. Other people pick up and share my writing with their readership. My niche happens to be personal development. I often review books and other materials from my favorite authors and mentors. Sometimes – now here’s the REAL CATCH, folks – I recommend stuff via an ‘affiliate link’ for which I get paid a commission ranging anywhere from 5-75%.

My burning question is, “Do you REALLY need to know this?”

Does it bother you that part of your Walmart purchase goes to pay the employees? Were you NOT aware of that? Does it bother you more that the Greeter makes money, too? Isn’t (s)he just a friendly face welcoming you into the store? How misleading is that?

Can you understand the sick correlation. I’m a nice guy with a friendly blog. I write interesting and informative articles and pieces about people and things I like. It’s what I do for my living (aka my source of income). Sometimes I do my job so well that people are ‘welcomed’ to further investigate via a ‘special link’ with the intention of buying the recommendation if they really like what they see.

Oh, tho horror of it all! With this in mind, a small but vocal group of people with nothing better to do contacted the FTC, another small but vocal group of people with nothing better to do. Together, they made a BIG NOISE by coming up with the inane idea of forcing bloggers and other writers to include silly disclaimers in their work. These disclaimers were to inform supposedly otherwise ignorant and foolish consumers (um, that would be YOU) that someone was about to make money off them if said consumer was stupid enough to make a purchase decision!

Really now… if this law goes through, can the Walmarts and other stores of the world be far behind? The nightmare is just beginning!

Remember Gerald Ford’s quote, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

For further reading you may want to visit: http://jamiedunne.com/blog/tag/ftc-affiliate-marketer-law/

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This is NOT an affiliate link!

All the best from Toronto,
Russ and Maggie

The world can seem like a crazy place sometimes…
OK, a LOT of the time! However, no matter what is going on in your life, magic happens when you learn how to choose better feelings now!
You’re Gonna Love That Feeling

Back to Charles:
Now, I really like the way Russ sheds light on things by using situations from everyday life. That helps us understand better what’s really going on lately. Some new rules (guidelines) are being drawn up that will have the force of law, but without the review process reserved for real laws. In other words, if you don’t like what these career civil “servants” do, there’s no chance for you to vote ‘em out of office. In fact, there is virtually no recourse.

But why are they doing this crazy thing? Obviously there have been shady actions by certain “marketers” that brought about the FTC crackdown. If this bit of industry news slipped past you, here it is in a nutshell.

Some major operators have been building blogs purporting to give personal testimonials or reviews of products such as tooth-whiteners, or cosmetic products, or male growth enhancers, or diet supplements, or any other thing that seems to be in high demand. If you were to visit one of those websites, a bit of software would read your IP address and automatically insert the names of cities near you into the phony testimonials that are liberally sprinkled all around the website.

The site not only appears to be full of earnest product reviews and personal experiences, perhaps a third or more of the testimonials are automatically rigged to seem as if people in your area have already tried the product and benefitted from it.

As I said, these totally fictitious blogs are being built by major operators. How major? Any one operator might have hundreds – even thousands – of these sites, every one of which is totally dishonest and misleading. Furthermore, if you were to follow one of the links to a product and bought it, the marketer will earn a commission.

No, you wouldn’t pay a single cent more… that commission is the salesman’s pay for finding interested prospects. And there would be nothing wrong with that, if the recommendations were not all fraudulent.

So the government, in an effort to halt these dishonest business practices, is instituting guidelines that require if I recommend a product and may earn a commission, I must disclose that fact clearly. Okay… not a graceful way to do things, but what the heck.

What’s frosting the butts of most honest marketers is this – those fraudulent operators are not going to be particularly inconvenienced by this. They’ll just abandon their thousands of current websites (as a cost of doing business) and move on to some other sharp practice that barely skirts the edge of some other law. They know before they begin a new practice that its effectiveness will only last for a while. Once that tactic stops working, they just move on to something else.

Meanwhile the rest of us are stuck dealing with the red tape and inconvenience they’ve caused.

So there you have it, the real reason Internet marketing has come to be considered tawdry by many.

And you can also see how, once a government agency sets out to rescue the public from being taken advantage of, they almost always end up solving the wrong problem. In this case, for example, a lack of clear disclosure is not causing the difficulty. The real problem is excessive naivety and piss-poor thinking skills among the general population.

Naive and gullible consumers will always find a way to be taken advantage of by slick operators. But it is not the government’s desire to teach the public to think for themselves. A thinking public might very well end up questioning the government itself as well as all its convoluted pork barrel policies.

Instead, that government and the agencies it forms are dedicated to providing that great weak-minded, non-questioning, non-protesting populous with a teat to suckle and “leaders” to do their thinking for them. And that’s largely why all this is happening in the Internet world today.

So what about you? Do you prefer being protected like some idiot with no judgment of your own? Or would you rather take your chances, do your own thinking, and figure out your own path in life?

In either case, would you care to mention why?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

P.S. – As you can probably tell, my opinions are totally unbiased in this matter.