A couple days ago, the news around the marketing and copywriting water cooler was that the FTC, the club-wielding government body in charge of stamping out deceptive and prohibited marketing practices, had sued several Agora companies.
Agora and its offshoots are some of the biggest players in direct response space, so this has the potential to be big news. Or not. But in any case, it got me curious about what the FTC is up to, so I signed up for their newsletter.
And only yesterday, while I was in the middle of hacking away at my current real estate VSL, I got an FTC email with the subject line, “Yet another real estate seminar scam.” The email reads:
“For the second time in about a month, the FTC sued a company that falsely promised it would show people how to earn money in real estate to get them to pay thousands of dollars for seminars. […] If someone says you can earn a lot of money on an investment with little or no risk, that’s probably a scam.”
So how does this affect the real estate promo I’m writing, which pretty much says you can make money in real estate with little or no risk, and also has an $1k+ upsell on the back end?
Well, I’ll tell you about that another day.
For now, I encourage you to head over to the FTC site and sign up for their newsletter. It’s entertaining reading, and might be a lifesaver if you’re doing work in edgy markets like bizopp, investing, or health.