FTC Guidelines ♥

I only found out about this recently, but apparently starting from today us bloggers, and youtubers, and even facebook users and twitter users have to follow some guidelines when posting about products and writing reviews. I'm not actually sure if this applies to us UK bloggers because mostly the people who I've seen talk about this have been from the US, but better safe than sorry since we can have readers from all around the world so it only seems fair that we all follow the same guidelines. (I am confused about this so if anyone knows it would be very helpful.)

The rules:
1. We have to say if we have any relationships with any companies.
2. We have to say if a product has been sent to us by companies for free.
3. We have to say if we are being paid to review or talk about a product.

I like the idea that we now all have to be truthful about products so it should stop people from posting false reviews because they're being paid to give a good review of that product, when really it might not actually be very good at all. I do think its a bit of a pain to have to say in every post that you paid for the product with your own money etc.. That's why i have written a disclaimer at the bottom of my blog so that i don't have to say every single time that i bought the product with my own money and no one is paying me to write this review and its my own honest opinion blah blah blah.. Is a disclaimer at the bottom of my blog enough? I think it would put some people off writing reviews if they had to write a disclaimer each time in each review they wrote.

Overall i think these guidelines are a good thing and as long as you are honest in your reviews you have nothing to worry about, and i guess we'll be finding out if any of those rumors about youtube guru's charging money to review products are true now that they have to tell us.

If i got anything wrong or you have any more information on this please feel free to leave a comment.

Thanks for reading,
Charlotte. xx