| Comment Number: | 522418-02241 |
| Received: | 6/15/2006 1:04:26 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Ken Anderson |
| State: | IN |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
I appreciate the FTC's efforts to crack down on scamsters. Unfortunately, the way the proposed rule is worded, its main effect would be to put a lot of honest small and medium online companies out of business. To raise just one point, there are many legitimate online merchants who pay independent web publishers for promoting the merchants' products and services. These independent web publishers (who are typically one-man or one-woman operations run out of their home) place links on their websites to the merchants' websites. When visitors to the publisher sites go to the merchant site through these links and purchase a product or service, the referring publisher receives a commission. These independent publishers are referred to as the 'affiliates' of the merchants. In the vast majority of cases, the publishers DO NOT pay the merchant any fees to sign up to sell the merchants' products. A sample survey of affiliate programs on offer will establish this fact beyond doubt. This fact makes these 'affiliate programs' completely different in character from Multi Level Marketing and other scams. The independent publisher (or 'affiliate') is simply a third party who receives a commission when he refers a sale (or sometimes, refers a lead / prospect) to the merchant. He or she gets paid only when he performs, i.e., when there is an actual sale or lead generated for the merchant. Therefore, my earnest request to the FTC is to make the proposed legislation applicable only in cases where the affiliated publisher (or other purchaser of a business opportunity) pays the merchant at least $ 0.10, or even just $0.01 in order to sign up for and/or purchase the opportunity. This would bring tens of thousands of legitimate businesses out of the ambit of this new law. You will agree that if the affiliated publisher is not required to invest even one cent to become an affiliated publisher, there is no question of him being deceived by the merchant into buying into the opportunity to profit from promoting the merchant. Because he or she (the affiliate) is not buying anything at all, there is no cash flowing from him to the merchant. I sincerely hope that you will consider at least this one amendment to the proposed legislation. Sincerely, Ken Anderson