If you plan to grow a successful business online, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you are doing something illegal.
As the digital way of life continues to grow at such a fast pace and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you try to stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence plays an important part in your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these new laws has legal implications for various business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into various advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
Additionally, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
In this article, we discuss why it’s important to have a compliant website and provide inexpensive ways that will help make your website or blog compliant quickly and easily.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you endorse
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider for a minute what could happen to your business if the following were to happen:
- A customer has a heart attack after using your online workout program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people an adverse reaction.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their website.
- There is no statement on your website making visitors aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and may earn a financial benefit if visitors purchase it.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- Someone claims your testimonials are false and tries to sue you because of it.
- You didn’t disclose that you have received a free copy in your product review.
- Your website contains adult content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in violation of 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 infringed 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 to the Google program 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 exposed to litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and clearly accessible to all site visitors.
Complying With Third-Party Companies
Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using their products or features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your online properties with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling digital products through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation 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 does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to create applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)
- If you are unsure 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 via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online 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 are required to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Site
If your website is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider including any of these compliance pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right disclosures to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you are not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies site users that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets users know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to site users that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website) so that visitors can access legal information from all pages …
(It’s important to display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Go here to learn more:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- 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 web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described previously.
More info:
Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress-driven websites you may be interested in using:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page 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 a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When a user agrees to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)
Choose from a number of pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – 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
To learn more about the benefits of using this useful plugin, visit the plugin site:
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
Legal Suite Pro 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 Use
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
Go here to learn more:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some kind of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal page templates, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or advertise online. If your website doesn’t comply 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. 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 pertaining to your business.
Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant 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 – 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
In Addition …
- 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
- 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 and easily add essential legal pages to your site.
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