FTC Affiliate Disclosure Rules: What 'Clear and Conspicuous' Means

Most guides to FTC affiliate disclosure rules tell you to add a line somewhere on the page that says "some links may be affiliate links" and call it compliant. That line would not survive contact with the FTC's own guidance. The actual standard, set out in the FTC's Endorsement Guides and its plain-language FAQ for creators, is stricter: any material connection between you and what you're promoting, a commission, a free product, or any other compensation, must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, before or immediately alongside the link itself, not hidden in a footer, a bio, or behind a "see more."

This isn't personal legal advice, and nothing below should replace a lawyer who can look at your specific content, audience, and jurisdiction. It's a plain-language walk through what the FTC has actually published, with wording you can adapt.

What "clear and conspicuous" actually requires

A disclosure counts as clear and conspicuous when it's difficult to miss and easily understood by an ordinary consumer, not just present somewhere on the page. If someone has to click a link, expand a caption, or scroll past your content to find it, it doesn't count. The standard is that the disclosure has to be unavoidable to someone reading or watching the way people actually read or watch.

Two things follow. First, "affiliate link" as a label isn't enough on its own: the FTC has noted that ordinary consumers might not understand that phrase means you get paid when they buy through it, so say that plainly instead. Second, a platform's own disclosure tool (Instagram's "Paid partnership" tag, for instance) isn't automatically sufficient by itself. Using it is sensible, but relying on it alone doesn't guarantee you've met the standard, so pair it with your own plain-language line.

Where the disclosure has to sit, by format

The general rule is that the disclosure has to appear before the endorsement or the link, not after it, and the closer it sits to the thing it's disclosing, the safer you are. How that plays out differs a little by format.

Blog posts and written reviews. The disclosure needs to appear before the reader reaches the affiliate link, ideally near the top of the post rather than only in a footer. A link that sends someone straight into the post from elsewhere, a newsletter or a social post, can't skip past the disclosure on the way in.

Video, including YouTube. A disclosure only in the video description isn't enough, since plenty of viewers never open it. A spoken disclosure paired with matching on-screen text, repeated if the video is long, is the safer combination.

Social media captions. The disclosure needs to sit at the very top of the caption, before any "see more" truncation, not buried among a block of hashtags at the end. A hashtag like #ad works, but only if it's easy to spot on its own.

Email. Same logic: the disclosure belongs in the body, close to the recommendation, not in a signature block at the bottom most readers never scroll to.

The pattern across every format is the same: disclosure before the link, not after it, and visible without an extra click. That single sentence is the one worth remembering if you forget everything else here.

The mistake that actually gets flagged

The single most common error isn't skipping disclosure altogether. It's putting a real, honestly worded disclosure in the wrong place: after the affiliate link instead of before it, or only in a bio or an "about this site" page the reader would have to go looking for. Both technically disclose the relationship somewhere. Neither meets the standard, because by the time a reader reaches a footer or clicks through to a bio, they've already read the recommendation and, often, already clicked the link. The FTC's test isn't "did you disclose this somewhere," it's "would an ordinary consumer see this before acting on your recommendation."

A concrete before-and-after:

Not sufficient: a full paragraph of glowing recommendation, the affiliate link, and then three paragraphs later, a footer note reading "This site contains affiliate links."

Sufficient: a one-line disclosure directly above or immediately before the first affiliate link in the post, worded plainly enough that a reader who's never heard the term "affiliate marketing" would still understand you get paid.

Disclosure language that actually meets the standard

Skip the hedge. "Some links on this page may be affiliate links" is vague about whether this link is one, and vague about what that means for the reader. Use language that's specific and plain instead. All of the following are close to how the FTC's own examples are worded:

• "I earn a commission if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you."
• "This is an affiliate link. If you sign up through it, I get paid."
• "Disclosure: I get a commission for purchases made through links in this post."
• For a hashtag-based disclosure on social media: "#ad" or "#affiliate", placed at the start of the caption, not mixed into a block of unrelated tags at the end.
• For video, spoken near the start: "Quick disclosure before we get into this: I earn a commission if you buy through the link below," paired with matching on-screen text.

Any of these, placed before the link and impossible to miss without extra effort, clears the bar. The wording matters less than two things: it says plainly that you get paid, and it sits somewhere the reader can't avoid seeing before they click.

What it costs to get this wrong

Enforcement sits under Section 5 of the FTC Act, the same authority the FTC uses for unfair or deceptive practices generally. For a knowing violation, the maximum civil penalty is $53,088 per violation, a figure set in the FTC's inflation adjustment effective January 17, 2025, and still current as of this writing since no further adjustment has followed. That figure applies per violation, and the FTC has treated each undisclosed post or link as capable of counting separately, which is how exposure scales quickly for anyone running the same undisclosed pattern across many posts rather than one.

In practice, first contact from the FTC is far more likely to be a warning letter than a civil penalty demand, especially for an individual creator rather than a large advertiser. But a warning letter still means the FTC has told you, in writing, that your current practice doesn't meet the standard, and fixing the placement problem described above is cheaper than finding out which category you're in the hard way.

How this compares to the UK's rules

If you're promoting the same content to a UK audience, the FTC isn't the relevant regulator there. The Advertising Standards Authority and CAP Code cover that ground, and as the pillar guide to affiliate programmes for reviewers already notes, UK rules require a clear line like "I earn a commission if you sign up through this link" placed before the link, not buried in a footnote. Different regulator, different statute, same underlying principle: disclosure has to be upfront and unmissable. If your audience spans both countries, meeting the stricter placement standard, before the link, unavoidable, plainly worded, satisfies both at once.

What this looks like for a Lesso referral link specifically

If you're promoting your own Lesso referral link, this is exactly the situation the rule is written for: you earn a commission when someone signs up through your link and their course goes on to sell. Lesso's affiliate agreement already requires clear, prominent disclosure placed before the link, not buried in small print, with examples like "I earn a commission if you sign up through this link" and "Affiliate link: I may earn from qualifying sign-ups." Those were written against UK advertising rules, but they clear the FTC's clear-and-conspicuous standard too, since both tests ask the same underlying question.

Concretely: if you're reviewing course platforms and Lesso is one of them, "I earn a commission if you sign up for Lesso through this link" needs to sit before the link in your review, not on a disclosures page linked from your footer. The same holds whether you're writing a comparison, recommending Lesso in a newsletter, or walking through it on video; the placement rule doesn't change with the format. If you're doing this without a dedicated website, through social captions or video instead, affiliate marketing without a website covers those channels, and the same before-the-link rule applies regardless of which one you use.

The one-line version to keep

If you remember nothing else from this: put the disclosure before the link, make it plain enough that someone who's never heard of affiliate marketing would understand you get paid, and don't rely on a footer, a bio, or a platform's own tag to do that job alone. That's the test the FTC actually applies, and it's simpler to meet upfront than to retrofit once a warning letter names your specific posts.