As a business owner, you do not want to learn the hard way that you are doing something illegal.
Internet laws were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods 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 site for commercial gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws has implications for several online business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like display advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
In addition, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with various legalities, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be endorsing online, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your sites become compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws in your country or region.
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of the situations below were to take place:
- A person suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online workout program.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
- You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you’ll do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your website letting visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and could receive a commission if visitors purchase it.
- You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund and return policies.
- A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult-related content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.
Consider also the following real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received 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 users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to make sure that your website stays fully compliant with the law.
Compliance With Third-Party Services
Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are required to let your site users know that your website 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 many companies you engage with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue with your site with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your site using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell digital products using merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages to your website before your products are approved for selling via their marketplace …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this will most likely prompt 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 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.
Various online resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you are planning to develop social networking applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to various legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- 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 plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
Basic Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your web site falls short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to look into adding one or more of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general financial advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs readers that you are not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to users that you will benefit financially if they buy through an affiliate link.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Explains to visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs users that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with 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 To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors have access to the information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:
Legal Templates
You can find attorney-prepared downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Alternatively, you can download a package of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every 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 web server as previously described.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress Legal Plugins
In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, another option is to use a plugin.
Here are some great legal WordPress plugins you may be interested in checking out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If the idea of creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when user agrees to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your main dashboard menu …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)
Choose from various pre-written legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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 this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 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 license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).
More information:
If using the services of legal experts to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your site to be safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with government laws and regulations and the guidelines and terms of service required by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or endorsing online. Your website or blog must comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not provide 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 is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Resources
Below is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission 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
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 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 WordPress site using simple methods, resources and plugins.
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