Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you do business with?
Online laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not excuse someone from taking legal action against your business.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws has legal implications for various online business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote most advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could also end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website or blog may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern online businesses, the importance of complying with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your website, and that there are plugins for WordPress users that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. As stated above, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you advertise
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider for a minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A user suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing prospective subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you plan to do with the details you have collected.
- Someone copies content from your site and publishes it on their website.
- There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and could derive an affiliate commission if visitors purchase it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you as a result.
- You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy of a product you reviewed.
- Your site publishes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being a target of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
it’s important to make sure that your website or blog remains fully compliant with the law.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you do business with.
For example:
Google requires websites to display legal information when using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online via merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products online with the aid of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to create apps that integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about your 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 service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon 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 include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will help keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider adding any of these compliance pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general financial information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you’re not receiving any form of compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you will be compensated if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to your visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then add links to your legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) so that users will be able to access legal information from all of your pages …
(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar here:
Use Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
To learn more, visit this site:
Alternatively, you can download a package of legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website templates were created by an attorney and 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 web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page 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 the pages to your web server as described previously.
Go here for more information:
Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks when users agree to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will be added to your WordPress dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 And Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing 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 hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your site to be safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or offering online. Your website or blog must comply with a wide range of regulations, many of which you may not even be aware of.
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 provide no legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
References And Legal Resources
Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program
- 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
- Google AdSense Help – Required Content
- Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
- Google 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog using simple and inexpensive resources and WordPress plugins.
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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)