Where do Affiliate Responsiblity's End?

I am like many people, I enjoy reading, being responsible, and try to stay up on the legislation that may effect small business owners.

In a recent blog article by Brian Clark, a Pro-Blogger, he had a very interesting post regarding bloggers disclosing their affiliate relationships and how the FTC is going to regulate this.

Within this post Brian does have affiliate links and he does disclose that he is an affiliate. Where things can get hairy for anyone who blogs or endorses a product, is if the product is not delivered. Worse yet, what would happen if the contact information, if the product does not deliver, does not work? Case in point is a link that this blogger actually re-blogged about for a product.

In addition to his post, I would add the following:

Before publishing, or "re-publishing" any Affiliate Link as the "Desperate Buyers Only", that you make sure that the link is good. Make sure that your affiliate that is compensating you regardless of the "pennies" is producing the product as they state. Most importantly, make sure that the contact information is correct so that anyone who would possibly click that link could take care of anything that may arise from a product not being delivered.

As in the "Desperate Buyers Only", if purchased, you pay your money, the link is not delivered to you to down load the product, you are referred to an email account, you send an email and no one responds. My opinion only, this reflects negatively on anyone who actually has an association with any affiliate link where product is not delivered as "promised". I am not sure I would want to be tangled with that.

Very good lesson however and it would be very interesting to learn how much of an impact this actually has on anyone who is supporting an affiliate that does not deliver the product, whether they actually know about it or not.

I personally do have affiliate relationships, Google runs adds on my blog, I do link to my business, I do share links that I feel are of interest or may be helpful to others, the links I share may or maynot have items for sale by the people who are affiliated with them, and I do try to take responsibility when it comes to making sure things work properly, after all if I do not, it is my reputation on the line.

For the record, no, Brian did not pay me to say this, nor do I have an affiliate relationship with him; these are my opinions and I welcome other's opinions as well, just as long as I do not have to be responsible for them.

What do you think?