ARTICLE · ABOUT A 5-MINUTE READ

The two rules I won’t break

By Justin Ventola · 3 November 2026

Two rules run everything I publish — this site, the emails, the videos, the manual.

The first reaction I usually get is sympathy, as if I had tied one hand behind my back. I think the opposite is true, and I want to lay out why, because if you build anything like this system you will face the same choice on day one.

Rule one: no income claims

Start with the boring reason: in the United States the Federal Trade Commission treats earnings claims as advertising claims, and an advertiser has to be able to back up the claim and the impression it creates. “Results not typical” in small print stopped working as a defence years ago. The platforms followed: the make-money category is one of the most heavily moderated on YouTube, TikTok and Meta, and income-claim videos are the ones that get the strikes.

Now the better reason. An income claim attracts exactly the person who will refund you. They came for the number, the number was never promised to them in a form they could hold, and when month two looks like month one they are gone — and angry. Read a hundred one-star reviews of these programs and you will see the same sentence: nobody told me. An honest timeline — twelve to eighteen months, measured weekly — repels that reader on day one and keeps the one who was going to build anyway. That is a smaller audience and a far better one.

And the quiet reason: a number you did not invent is the strongest thing you own. When I publish my first thirty days, the figures will be whatever they are. Small numbers published honestly beat big numbers nobody believes.

What I say instead of a claim: what the thing is, what it costs, how long it took me, what it does not do, and who should not buy it. That list converts fine. It converts the right people.

Rule two: the disclosure sits beside the link

The law first, again: the FTC’s endorsement guides say a material connection — a commission — has to be disclosed clearly and close to the recommendation, where a reader cannot miss it. A paragraph at the bottom of the page does not count. A page about disclosures that nobody visits does not count. Beside the link, in the same size, counts.

Then the business reason. A disclosure beside the link is a small, visible act of honesty at the exact moment the reader is deciding whether to trust you. It costs almost nothing in clicks — people who were going to buy the tool still buy it — and it buys the one thing this whole system runs on, which is that the reader believes the next thing you say. Hide the commission once and you have spent that, for a few dollars.

There is also the practical side: it makes you choosy. When you have to write “affiliate link” next to something, you only link things you would recommend with your name on them anyway. My tools page has three affiliate links and two plain ones, and it says which is which. The plain ones will stay plain until the company approves me, and the page will say so the day that changes.

How I apply them, so you can copy it

None of this is a handicap. It is the reason a reader who has been burned twice will give a third person a chance — and in this market, that reader is most of the market.

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