Is your website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are promoting or selling?
As the digital way of life continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s absolutely essential to try and stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your site remains compliant, especially if having a digital presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.
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 profit, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau)
These laws affect several business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in most advertising and online marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your site may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be advertising online, and that there are solutions that can help your websites become more compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider for one minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A user has a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with their details.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog telling your site visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you are recommending and could derive an affiliate commission if visitors purchase using your affiliate link.
- You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider also the real examples of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. 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 websites picked at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being exposed to non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will engage with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their services or product features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue online with your blog with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products via merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements product vendors using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners 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 any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.
There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to develop social networking applications for your site, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Legal Information Pages Does My Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?
If your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above pages, you may want to look into including any of the following pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides health or medical information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will be compensated if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Discloses to site users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors know that you have been compensated in some form 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that users have access to the information from all of your pages …
(It’s important to display legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and internet forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
Go here for more details:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates)
Cut & Paste website templates 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 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
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for every 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 web server as described earlier.
For more details, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use a plugin.
Here are some great WordPress plugins that you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Pre-written 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 – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your WordPress dashboard area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
You have the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)
Choose from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 great plugin, visit the plugin site:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable legal templates for your site …
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 And Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro – 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.
For more details, go here:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do any type of business online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or recommending online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
Additional Resources
Below is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require 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 – 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
- United States Copyright Office
See Also …
- 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog using simple and inexpensive methods and solutions.
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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)