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Overview

Kajabi loves for Heroes to recommend or endorse Kajabi. However, there are rules that must be followed when participating in such marketing.

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What is the FTC?

The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, is an independent agency of the United States government whose mission is to protect consumers from anticompetitive, misleading, deceptive, and unfair business practices. The FTC wants to make sure that consumers are able to differentiate between ad content and organic content. This has become an increasing focus of the FTC especially given the rise of the use of endorsements in social media marketing. Over the past few years, the FTC has expressed growing concern over the lack of transparency in endorsements and partner content. According to the FTC, the increased use of endorsements in social media has led to widespread and pervasive deceptive advertising. According to the FTC’s rules, paid influencers, endorsers, and partners must disclose the nature of their relationships with the brands within their content. Your audience needs to understand whether what they’re seeing is an ad or a genuine endorsement, with no monetary gain in it for you. When you are paid or receive free or discounted products or services from Kajabi (for example as a paid partner or endorser) these rules apply to you, and even if you’re not from the United States, they may still apply. Violating the FTC’s rules can result in penalties, fines, and even legal fees. Unfortunately, just claiming that you didn’t know the rules or you had no intent to violate the rules, is not an argument to avoid these penalties.

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Key requirements

Reading and understanding the FTC’s guidelines can be complicated, which is why we’ve provided a summary of the key requirements you must meet as a Kajabi partner or paid endorser.
Note: This summary is based on what we understand about the FTC rules and they are not to be used as legal advice. We recommend that you contact your legal counsel if you have questions or concerns.
  • Disclosure language must be placed before your link in any and all placements, regardless of the format of the content. It’s best practice to place your disclosure above your links at the beginning of your content or as close to the links as possible. Disclosure language must not be avoidable or hard to miss.
  • Disclosures need to be clear and apparent to the reader. In other words, you shouldn’t have to search or click on a link in order to see it. For example, although placing your disclosure in your website footer meets the requirement of having one, it may be hard to find and thus will not meet the requirement of being displayed clearly and conspicuously.
  • If you include your endorsement and/or link in any social media posts, you must include the FTC disclosure. You can use hashtags to disclose your relationship like #KajabiPartner or #Ad.
  • If you are reposting a video, you must make sure the subsequent videos also include the required disclosures.
  • If using video, the disclosure should be present in both audio and written form, and not just in the text description.
  • Disclosures should always be added, even in cases where space is limited.
  • Disclosures should be in the same language as the endorsement.
  • If posting from outside the United States, U.S. law applies if it’s reasonably foreseeable that the post will affect U.S. consumers. Foreign laws might also apply, please consult counsel in your local jurisdiction.

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FTC disclosure examples

If you’re not sure what to put as your disclosure, here are some examples you can use:
  • “I partner with Kajabi and may receive a commission if you sign up through my link.”
  • “This post contains affiliate links.”
  • “Paid partnership with Kajabi.”
Here are a few “Do’s” and “Don’ts” from the FTC:
  • Do clearly disclose when you have a financial or family relationship with a brand.
  • Do ensure your sponsorship is hard to miss.
  • Do treat sponsored tags, including tags in pictures, like any other endorsement.
  • On image-only platforms like Snapchat, do superimpose disclosures over the images.
  • Don’t assume followers know about all your brand relationships.
  • Don’t assume disclosure built into social media platforms is sufficient.
  • Don’t use ambiguous disclosures like “Thanks,” #collab, #sp, #spon, #affiliate or #ambassador.
  • Don’t rely on disclosures that people will see only when they click “more”.
When in doubt, visit the following links or reach out to the FTC directly: