As a website owner, you do not want to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
Internet laws and regulations were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t prevent someone from taking legal action against your business.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)
The new laws has legal ramifications for several business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a range of advertising or online merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site(s) may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be using online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you recommend
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives people an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you will do with their details.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their website.
- There is no statement on your site making your site users aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are marketing that you may earn financial benefits if visitors buy via your affiliate link.
- You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Your visitors claim your testimonials are all fake and try to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy in your product review.
- Your site publishes adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider also the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 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 easy it is to risk becoming a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to ensure that your website complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Services
Big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You are obligated to let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will interact with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display certain information when using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue online with your blogs with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell products online via companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale in their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for vendors using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially if you plan to sell or promote products or services online with the aid of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
There are many online resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you are planning to develop applications that will integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Apps that integrate with social networking sites 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 organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Compliance Information Does My Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and external service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider adding one or more of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides health or medical information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the right types of disclosure pages to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs users that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you may be compensated if they purchase through your affiliate link.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Discloses to users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Lets site users be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
- 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 To Your Website
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add links to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your WP sidebar, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More information:
Another option is to purchase a package of legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as previously described.
For more details, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using templates, you can keep things very simple using a plugin.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users you may be interested in checking out:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you a great deal of time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks only when the user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)
You can also choose from various built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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 WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …
Learn We’ve written a detailed article about this plugin here:
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 Plugin – 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 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).
For more information, go here:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.
We want your business to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
***
As stated earlier, if you make money online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines for 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or sell online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
References And Legal Resources
Below is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- 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 …
- 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
- 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 provided above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum