As a website owner, the last thing you want to do is to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The introduction of these new laws affect various business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or online merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
This guide explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and describes simple solutions to make your WordPress site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you advertise on your website or blog
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after using your online workout program.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people an adverse reaction.
- You’ve told subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you’ll do with their details.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their website.
- You did not tell your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you may derive a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims your testimonials are fake and decides to sue you because of it.
- You didn’t disclose that you were given a free copy in a product review.
- Your website contains adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider also these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken at least 3 of Google’s policies. Although the website owners could technically be sued by Google, more than likely what could happen, is that they would be issued notices or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
it’s important to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services
Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with online.
For example:
Google requires websites to display legal information when using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue with your WordPress blogs with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell products online with companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.
There are many resources websites for businesses that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to develop applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your business stay out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of the pages listed below where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you are not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Review/Sample Copy – Informs your visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors know that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add links to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors can access the information from all of your site’s pages …
(Display legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-prepared downloadable internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms)
More information:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut and paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described previously.
Go here for more details:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using copy & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use a plugin.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you time.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will be added to your main WordPress dashboard area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Area)
With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, medical sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)
Select from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured Legal Templates)
Legal page templates include:
- Terms of Use (Users are forced to agree to Terms and Conditions before using site)
- Linking Policy
- External Links Policy
- Terms and Conditions
- Refund Policy
- Affiliate Disclosure
- Privacy Policy
- Affiliate Agreement
- Facebook Privacy Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- Antispam Policy
- DoubleClick DART Cookies Policy
- Disclaimer Template
- FTC Disclosure Statement Template
- Medical Disclaimer Template
- Testimonials Disclosure – As per FTC guidelines
- Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Template
- DMCA Policy Template
- California Privacy Rights Policy Template
- Digital Goods Refund Policy Template
- COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy Policy Template
- Blog Comments Policy Template
- Newsletter Subscription Policy and Disclaimer Template
- FTC Disclaimer Widget
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this great plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
For a detailed article about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
This plugin lets you easily install professionally-written legal pages such as:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Social Media Disclosure
- Medical Disclaimer
- Terms & Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress – Professionally-written legal forms)
Additionally:
- Drag & Drop FTC Disclaimer Widget: Add an FTC Disclaimer to any WordPress sidebar or widget area.
- Customizable EU Cookie Compliance Bar: Display an EU cookie compliance bar if you are getting traffic from the EU and your sites use cookies.
With just one-click you can install almost all of the legal pages your site needs and these professionally written legal pages can be created in your theme and/or as a standalone page outside of your theme.
The plugin developers secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
For more information, go here:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some form of basic legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a legal expert.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online, it’s important that your website is compliant with government laws and regulations and the guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or recommend online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Better Business Bureau
- Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising
- Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act
- CAN-SPAM Act Guide
- Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule
- FTC Regulatory Review Web Page
- FTC Rules and Guides Currently Under Review
- The Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force – Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework
- FTC Staff Report: Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
- FTC Final Guides Governing Endorsements and Testimonials
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
Additionally …
- Google Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- AdSense Help – Required Content
- Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
- AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
- ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
- Facebook Platform Policies
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)