What Affiliates Can Legally Say About Income in 2026

August 14, 2026 · Compliance
Prices and terms last verified August 14, 2026.

You can share a real income figure if you can prove it today, name the source and date in the copy, and state what people typically earn right beside it. You cannot promise a timeline, use the word guaranteed, or post lifestyle photos implying earnings. The FTC now sues individual affiliates, not just companies.

Something changed in 2026 and most affiliates have not noticed yet.

The FTC used to go after companies. Now it goes after people like you.

What Actually Changed in 2026

On April 27, 2026, the FTC settled against Steven and Gina Merritt. Not LifeWave, the company they promoted. The two of them, individually, as participants.

The order bars them from misrepresenting earnings “expressly or by implication, including through images of homes, vehicles, purchases, or travel.” They also have to notify everyone they recruited.

Read that middle part again. Pictures of a car are an earnings claim now.

Two weeks later, on May 13, the principals behind IM Mastery Academy took a $795.8 million judgment and surrendered roughly $100 million in assets. Eight homes, nineteen cars, a yacht.

I have been in this business since 1996. I have watched the FTC move against companies plenty of times. Going after individual distributors, twice in a month, is new.

Can You Still Share Your Own Numbers?

Yes. I do. But every figure has to clear three tests before it goes anywhere near a page.

1. Is it true, and can you produce the evidence today? Not from memory, not roughly. A screenshot, a statement, a dated record you can put your hand on this week.
2. Is the source and the date in the copy itself? “HBA’s own affiliate presentation, as of March 2026” - not “studies show.”
3. If it is an earnings figure, does the typical result sit right beside it? Same paragraph. Same size type. Not a footnote, not a link, not smaller grey text at the bottom.

Fail any one of the three and the number does not get published.

That is it. That is the whole rule.

What Counts as an Income Claim

Wider than most people think. All of these carry the full substantiation burden:

That fifth row catches people. You can do the multiplication correctly, use real product prices, and still be making an earnings claim, because the reader does not experience it as arithmetic. They experience it as a promise.

The Word That Has to Go

Guaranteed.

Not about income. Not about results. Not about timelines. Not ironically.

There is one legitimate use: a real written policy. “HBA offers a 72-hour refund guarantee” is a fact about terms and it is fine. “Guaranteed income in 6-12 months” is the exact claim regulators pursue.

I had that phrase in my own copy for years. It is gone now.

What to Write Instead

Here is the part nobody tells you: the compliant version usually converts better.

Nobody believes “$8,000 in 10 weeks” on its own. Everybody believes this:

We made $8,000 in 10 weeks with that program back in 2013. Here is the part most people leave out: it cost us about $200 a month to run, took a solid 15 hours a week, and of the dozen people we brought in behind us, a few made money, most never made money, and a few quit.

That ratio has not changed in thirty years.

Same claim. Now with receipts and attrition attached. It is more persuasive, not less, because it sounds like a person who is not selling you.

And when you cannot substantiate a figure, describe the mechanism instead:

I am not going to put a number on what you would make, because I do not know your traffic, your list or your work rate. What I can tell you is the offer pays 80% recurring on a $25 product, so that is $20 per active customer per month. What that adds up to is entirely down to how many you get and how many stay.

Honest, specific, fully compliant, and more useful to the reader than any testimonial.

What About the New Rules I Keep Hearing About?

In January 2025 the FTC proposed three things: expanding the Business Opportunity Rule to cover money-making opportunities and business coaching, a new Earnings Claim Rule specifically for MLM, and an advance notice on mandatory earnings disclosures.

Those are proposals. As of today they are not final, and the vote was 3-2 with a dissent arguing the decision belonged to the incoming administration.

Do not let anyone sell you a compliance course on the basis that these are law. They are not.

But also do not relax. The enforcement above happened under existing authority. The FTC did not need new rules to take $795 million.

Rob’s Take

Most people in this industry treat compliance as a tax on marketing. Something you bolt on at the end, in eight-point grey type, hoping nobody reads it.

That is backwards, and after thirty years I think it is also bad business.

The affiliates I have watched last are the ones who tell you the cost before the upside, the timeline before the testimonial, and the failure rate before the plan. Not because a regulator made them. Because it is the only version that survives contact with a prospect who has already been burned twice.

Write like the FTC is reading. Then write like your reader has been lied to before, because they probably have.

Same edits, both times.