If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you are doing something illegal.
As the digital realm continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important to try and stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral aspect of your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
The new laws has legal implications for several online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could reject your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote various advertising and online marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could end up facing a multitude 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 are required to comply with legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern online businesses, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be recommending online, and that there are solutions for WordPress that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugins that we list further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws governing online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose products or services you offer
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be if any of the following were to occur:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you will do with it.
- Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your site informing your site visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you will earn a financial benefit if they buy it.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund or return policies.
- A visitor claims that your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.
Consider too the following documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- 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, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of at least three 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 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 exposed to litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to ensure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will interact with online.
For example:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using their products. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue with your WordPress blog using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your services using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information-based products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their networks …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for sellers)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services online using product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
There are many online resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to develop apps for your website users, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networks also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you have 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, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Legal Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Legally Compliant?
If you suspect that your web site falls short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and third-party providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into including one or more of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides health or medical advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the right disclosures to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you are not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets visitors be aware that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Explains to your visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory in your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add links to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from every web page …
(Display links to legal information on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar, see this tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More info:
Another option is to download a package of cut and paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And 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 easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations brought into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- 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 for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.
Go here for more information:
WordPress Legal Page Plugins
As well as using templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins you should check out:
WP Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you many headaches.
Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your website.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
You can also choose from various built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs with over 20 customizable compliance pages for your online presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)
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 of Service
- 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.
Visit this website to learn more:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of legal protection on your website until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your site to be safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal forms, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you are making money online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with all regulations and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Non-compliance 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Resources
Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
Additionally …
- 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
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)