Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you recommend or sell?
As the digital realm continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules keep changing, it’s absolutely essential to try and stay informed about what’s happening and make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if having an online presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “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 affect various business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website(s) are subject to legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern businesses online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be offering online, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you advertise on your website
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you will do with their details.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website letting your site users know that you are recommending a product as an affiliate that you could derive a commission if visitors end up buying through your affiliate link.
- You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- Your visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are misleading and try to sue you as a result.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website contains adult information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider now the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information 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 children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape 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 independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had infringed 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% were breaking 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 they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s vitally important to make sure that your online business complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Big 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 site visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you engage with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their products and features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue with your WordPress blog with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information-based products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their network …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product sellers)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically 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 type of business 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 interests by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations.
Various online business resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the 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 Applications
If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide 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 whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Legal Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Insured Against Legal Compliance Issues?
If your website is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to look into adding one or more of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the right disclosures to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Discloses to users that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Informs your visitors that you will be compensated if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to visitors that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar (or the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access the information from all your pages …
(Display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)
To learn more about displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar, refer to this tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements by searching online, or going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
To learn more, go here:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut & paste website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These templates were written 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 templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.
More information:
WordPress Legal Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your terms.
- New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main dashboard menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)
You can also select from various built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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
Go here to learn more this plugin:
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
total website compliance and disclaimer solution …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro 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 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).
Visit this site to learn more:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some type of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your business to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or using online. Your digital presence must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require 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
- 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
And …
- 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
We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and cost-effective methods and resources.
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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)