Category: Website Planning

As a website owner, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Online laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes goods or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not protect someone from taking legal action against your business.

New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). 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 – BBB)

The new laws affect several online business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote many advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website or blog are required to comply with legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern online businesses, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be recommending on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Is Your Site Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. As stated above, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose products or services you endorse on your website

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A customer suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not defined what you will do with the information you have collected.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and may earn an affiliate commission if they end up purchasing using your affiliate link.
• You did not spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are misleading and try to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy in a product review.
• Your website publishes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider also these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• 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 users from scraping UIDs. 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 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program they had violated, 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 through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s vitally important to make sure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

All the big websites and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You must let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with.

For example:

Google requires your site to display legal information when using their services and product features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your blogs with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

And even promoting your site via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell digital products using merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, 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 plan to 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. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

There are many sites that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you plan to develop apps that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with access to your legal pages …

(Apps for social networks also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)

Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website

If your web site falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help your website stay out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the following pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general content about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets users know that you will not receive any form of payment for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to visitors that you will benefit financially if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Informs readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets your readers know that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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.

Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)

You can then easily add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add these to your sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all pages …

(It’s important to display links to legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar here:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms)

Go here for more info:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates)

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 insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & 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 page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described previously.

More information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.

Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your navigation area …

(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from the admin area …

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

You can easily create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, niche websites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type dropdown menu)

You can also select from a number of pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – 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 this handy plugin, visit the plugin website:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over twenty customizable compliance pages for your online presence …

Go here to learn more about this plugin:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Visit this site to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a legal firm.

We want your site to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with all laws and regulations and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or recommend online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet 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

Plus …

• 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

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 above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site using simple methods and resources.

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