I just finished watching an excellent webinar interview conducted by my colleague Jim Edwards with Mr Rich Cleland of the FTC regarding the upcoming changes on 12/1/2009 to the current FTC policies on endorsements, affiliate marketing, testimonials, and product or results claims.

• If you are an affiliate marketer, information marketer or blogger who has any type of ads on your blog, you’ll want to listen to this webinar.
• If you sell physical products online and review them or post reviews/claims from your customers “This brand new men’s leather belt shaved 3″ off my waste size.” you’ll want to listen to this interview.

In it, Jim goes in-depth with questions on what these policies updates really mean. You can watch the interview in webinar format, listen to it in audio format or download the PDF of the interview.  The interview is free to everyone here.

Here is just a sampling of what Jim covers with Mr Cleland in the interview:

• How these policies apply to online marketing (and offline marketing).
• Whether or not this applies to non-us sellers
• The biggest misunderstanding that people have about the new FTC rulings.
• How to know if you’re inadvertently stepping over the line.
• What affiliate marketers have to do/say when promoting affiliate products.  (And there are several different scenarios to be aware of.)
• How to handle customer testimonials (for both  your products and other people’s products.  (Pay particular attention to the segment on Customer Testimonials.)
• What does this mean for bloggers, blogger reviews and banner ads.
• How to word your disclosures if you are an affiliate marketer.
• The difference between results based testimonials versus satisfaction based testimonials.  Can you still use results based testimonials?
• The difference between advertising statements and endorsements.
• How this affects promotions you do in social media sites (this is big considering that we are moving rapidly into the world of social commerce.)

There are many additional points covered as well.

I watched the webinar version of the interview because Jim has it split out by segments.  All you need to do is click on the segment you want to listen to first and away you go!  (However, you really should take the time out to listen to the whole thing.)

There is so much misinformation being posted on the web about this topic.  Including the fallacy that the FTC is going to fine violators $11,000+ for each violation (you’ll hear about the fine/penalty issue as well.)  This is why Jim went right to the source – the FTC and went in-depth to get the answers.

So click here right now and download, view or read a copy of this interview. If you’re selling something on the web, it’s your responsibility to make sure you are up on this issue.

** BTW, in keeping with the new FTC regulations, I’d like to disclose that I am not getting compensated by Jim for passing on this valuable interview to you.  It’s very in-depth and the best coverage I’ve heard on the topic.  Because it is key information to all online sellers, I want you to be up to date!