There is a sentence at the bottom of most affiliate posts that nobody believes. You have read it a thousand times. This post may contain affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you buy through them. It sits below the sign-off, above the copyright, in the same grey font as the privacy policy. It is technically a disclosure. It is also a hedge, and the hedge is the tell.

The instinct behind it is understandable. You want to be honest without sounding like a billboard. You want to be cautious, so you write may. You want to be unobtrusive, so you put it at the end. And you end up with a line that sounds like it was written by someone who is not quite sure whether they are selling something, which is precisely the impression you were trying to avoid.

The UK’s advertising regulator has looked at this exact phrasing and found it wanting. In a 2022 ruling about MailOnline articles, the Advertising Standards Authority considered that the phrase “may earn an affiliate commission” was ambiguous and confusing, because it suggested the publisher might not receive any payment when, barring administrative error, they would receive commission for purchases made through the links. The cautious word may was the problem. It implied uncertainty where there was none.

So the safe-sounding line is also the dishonest-sounding one. That is the real problem this piece is about, and it is a writing problem before it is a compliance problem.

What the regulators actually require

Start with the floor, because it is lower and simpler than the anxiety around it suggests. The US Federal Trade Commission’s guidance for endorsers says that if you endorse a product, your message should make it obvious when you have a relationship with the brand — what the FTC calls a “material connection.” That connection includes a financial relationship, such as the brand paying you or giving you free or discounted products or services.

The FTC is specific about placement. Disclosures are likely to be missed, it says, if they appear only on an about page, at the end of posts or videos, or anywhere that requires a click on “more.” The disclosure should be placed with the endorsement message itself. And the language should be simple: the FTC offers “Thanks to Acme brand for the free product” as an example that is often enough, if placed where it is hard to miss.

It also warns against the vocabulary that has grown up around this. Vague or confusing terms like “sp,” “spon,” or “collab,” and stand-alone terms like “thanks” or “ambassador,” are not good disclosures. The disclosure should be in the same language as the endorsement itself.

The UK guidance runs in the same direction. The Competition and Markets Authority says its rules apply to creators who have received a product free or at a discounted rate, or other incentives such as direct payment or commission, regardless of follower count. That last clause matters for anyone running a blog with hundreds of readers rather than hundreds of thousands. The ASA adds that affiliates are effectively acting as secondary advertisers, because they earn in direct proportion to the interest they generate in a product.

None of this is exotic. Disclose the relationship. Make it hard to miss. Put it where the reader encounters the recommendation, not in a footer. Use plain words. That is the standard.

The gap the sources leave open

Here is what none of them give you: a sentence.

They give you a standard — clear, prominent, before engagement, plain language — and then they stop. The FTC’s native advertising guide is explicit that its examples are general guidance and do not provide a safe harbor from liability. The ASA’s advice page says its recommendations are not intended to be exhaustive or prescriptive, and that other approaches may be equally acceptable. So there is no approved wording to copy. There is a job to do, and the words are yours to choose.

That is not a loophole. It is the recognition that context changes what honesty sounds like. A disclosure that reads as frank on one blog reads as defensive on another. The regulators set the floor; the voice is a craft decision, and treating it as a compliance checkbox is why so many disclosure lines read like they were written by a lawyer who has never met the reader.

This is craft guidance, not legal advice. Rules differ by jurisdiction and change over time. If your situation is complicated, that is a conversation for someone qualified to have it with you.

The hedge is the tell

Look again at the line you probably have somewhere on your site. May earn a commission. The word may is doing something strange. It is there to sound careful, but what it actually communicates is that the writer is not sure of their own position. And a reader who senses uncertainty about the commercial relationship will start to wonder what else is uncertain.

The ASA’s ruling on the MailOnline phrasing is useful precisely because it names the mechanism. The hedge implied the publisher might not get paid. But they would get paid. The line was less accurate than the blunt version would have been.

There is a related problem with the word affiliate itself. In a 2020 ruling about an Instagram Story, the ASA noted that the term “affiliate” was not widely understood by consumers, based on its own labelling research. A standalone “*affiliate” label was not sufficient to make the content recognisable as an ad. So the vocabulary that feels most precise to those of us inside the system is often the least clear to the people outside it.

Which leaves the sentence in an awkward spot. The cautious words are misleading. The technical words are opaque. What is left is the thing you would actually say.

A method, not a template

I am not going to hand you a sentence to paste in, because a pasted sentence is the same problem in a new font. What I can offer is a way to arrive at your own, and a test to run it through.

The method has four moves. Name the relationship. Name what you get. Put it where the link is. Read it aloud as if to a friend.

Take a vague line and work it. Suppose the original reads: This post may contain affiliate links. It names nothing, promises nothing, and hedges everything. A first pass might be: Some links in this post earn me a commission if you buy. Better — it names the mechanism and drops the hedge — but it still does not say which links, and it still sounds like a form.

A second pass, placed inline next to an actual link: If you buy this through the link above, I get a small percentage. It costs you nothing extra. That is a sentence a person would say. It names the relationship, names what you get, and answers the question the reader is actually asking, which is whether clicking costs them more.

These rewrites are illustrative, not drawn from any source. The point is the direction of travel: from hedge to specific, from footer to link, from system vocabulary to human vocabulary.

The test is the read-it-back test. If a reader clicked the link, bought the thing, then came back and read your line, would they feel you had been straight with them? That test is stricter than the legal floor and cheaper than a lawyer, and it is the one that actually protects the thing a small blog runs on.

Where the line goes

This is the most actionable thing in the sources and the one most commonly gotten wrong. The ASA is unusually concrete here: a disclaimer at the bottom of a post is unlikely to be sufficient, because the links and any connected claims would not be obviously identifiable as advertising at the moment the reader encounters them. The FTC says the same thing in different words — disclosures are likely to be missed if they appear only at the end of posts.

A footer disclosure is easier to write once and forget. An inline disclosure has to be placed every time. That is the whole trade. The footer is a filing cabinet; the inline line is a conversation.

There is a second placement question, about the post as a whole. The ASA distinguishes between content that wholly concerns affiliate-linked products and content where only some links are affiliate. Where the entire post is affiliate content, the commercial nature should be clear before the reader engages — the most straightforward way being an identifier like “Ad” in the title, visible before the click. Where only some links are affiliate and not all the content is directly connected to the product, a general “Ad” in the title is unlikely to be necessary, but the affiliate content and the links themselves should be identifiable as advertising.

That second case is the one that matters most for a mixed personal blog. Most of us are not running all-affiliate content. We are writing a genuine post — a book we read, a tool we use, a thing that solved a problem — and two or three links in it happen to be affiliate links. The guidance for that case is more permissive than the all-affiliate case and more useful: mark the specific links, do not brand the whole post.

The ASA suggests that placing an identifier such as “(Ad)” before the parts that relate to affiliated products is likely to be acceptable, as is stating clearly at the beginning that asterisks or other markers in the article indicate advertising, or that the author will receive a small share of sales through the related links. What it rules out is the generic, ambiguous disclaimer that says the author may receive a commission, particularly where the specific affiliate content has not been highlighted.

The small-blog nuance

There is a version of this advice that assumes you are running a review site, where every post is a product post and the whole page is commercial. If that is you, the all-affiliate guidance applies and an “Ad” identifier in the title is the straightforward move.

But if you are running a personal blog — the kind where a reader comes for the voice and stays for the archive — the mixed case is your case. And the mixed case has a specific shape. The post is editorial. Two links in it are commercial. The reader needs to know which is which, at the moment they meet each one.

This is where the one-sentence discipline pays off. You are not writing a disclosure for the post. You are writing a disclosure for the link. It sits next to the link, it says what the link is, and it gets out of the way. The rest of the post stays yours.

There is a temptation to over-disclose in the other direction — to put a banner at the top of every post just in case, to hedge the whole page so no individual line has to be precise. The ASA’s ruling on the MailOnline articles is a useful caution here: a disclaimer at the top was judged insufficient, not least because the phrasing was ambiguous. Volume is not the same as clarity. A precise line next to the link does more work than a vague line above the fold.

What the line is for

It is worth remembering what a disclosure is not. It is not a shield. The FTC’s native advertising guide says plainly that it does not provide a safe harbor from potential liability. You cannot write a magic sentence that makes the question go away.

What the line is for is smaller and more durable than that. It is the one place in a commercial post where your interest and your reader’s interest are the same sentence. You want them to know what the link is. They want to know what the link is. The disclosure is not a tax on the relationship. It is the relationship, stated.

That is why the hedge fails. A hedge is written for an imagined regulator, not for the reader. It protects the writer from having said too much, which is the opposite of what a trust asset needs. A blog measured in hundreds of readers does not run on reach. It runs on the sense that the person writing it is a person, and that the person is not pretending.

So the sentence is worth getting right, not because a regulator is watching, but because the reader is. The reader is the one who will notice whether you meant it.

One thing to try

Pick one post on your blog with an affiliate link in it. Find the disclosure line. Read it aloud. If it sounds like a form, rewrite it as the sentence you would say to a friend who asked whether you get paid for that link. Then move it so it sits next to the link, not at the bottom of the post. That is the whole experiment. One post, one line, one placement.

If the new line feels too blunt, sit with that feeling for a moment before softening it. The bluntness is usually the honesty, and the softening is usually the hedge coming back.

Questions I get asked about this

Do I need to disclose if I bought the product myself and just happen to be in an affiliate program? The FTC’s guidance addresses the case where you have no brand relationship and are simply telling people about a product you bought and like — in that case you do not need to declare that you have no brand relationship. But if you are in an affiliate program and a link earns you commission, that is a financial relationship, and the disclosure applies. The ASA’s framing is useful: you are acting as a secondary advertiser, because you earn in proportion to the interest you generate.

Does a disclosure at the top of the post cover all the links in it? Not necessarily, and this is where the ASA is more specific than most advice. Where only some links are affiliate, the guidance points toward marking the specific links rather than branding the whole post. A top-of-post line can work if it clearly explains what the markers in the article mean — for example, that asterisks indicate affiliate links. A vague top-of-post line that does not identify which links are commercial is the kind of thing that has been ruled insufficient.

Is “affiliate link” good enough as a label? The ASA’s labelling research found that the term “affiliate” was not widely understood by consumers. It is precise to us and opaque to many readers. A phrase that says what happens — that you receive a share of the sale — is clearer than the industry term.

Do platform disclosure tools count? The FTC says not to assume that a platform’s disclosure tool is good enough, though it can be used in addition to your own disclosure. The tool is a backstop, not a substitute.

Does any of this change if my audience is small? The CMA guidance applies regardless of follower count. The size of the audience does not change the obligation. It does change the stakes of getting the tone right, because a small audience is a relationship, and a relationship is what the line is protecting.

This piece is craft guidance based on published regulator material, not legal advice. The sources cited are the FTC’s Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers and its Native Advertising: A Guide for Businesses, the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s guidance for content creators, and the ASA’s advice page on online affiliate marketing. Rules differ by jurisdiction and change; check the current guidance for your situation.