Category: Website Planning

If you plan to grow a successful business online, you do not want to suddenly discover that you have been breaking rules or regulations.

As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s absolutely vital to try and stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is important in the success of your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, 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 to learn more.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has legal consequences for several online business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, including text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

Without certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a number of advertising or online merchant networks.

If your business online is not in compliance, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your site(s) are required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your sites become compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. As stated earlier, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you recommend on your website

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider for one moment what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own site.
• You haven’t advised your site users that you are an affiliate for the product you are promoting and may receive a financial benefit if they buy products through your affiliate link.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms of your refund and return policies.
• Your visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult content and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider now these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had infringed 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 breach of 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 with warnings or lose access 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 you could be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords User
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business remains legally compliant.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies

Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You must let your site visitors know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with online.

For example:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using their services and features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your website with Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your site via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell products online using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often ends up with 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 does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with FTC regulations.

There are many business resources that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …

(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to develop apps for your site users, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to your legal pages …

(Apps that integrate with social networking sites like Facebook 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., 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 make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay 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 are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid 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 magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

What Compliance Information Should I Add To My Site To Be Compliant?

If your web site is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help your website stay out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the following pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you are not being paid for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Informs your visitors that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Explains to readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets site users know that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding 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 Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legal folder on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)

You can then add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that users will be able to access the information from all your pages …

(Display links to legal information on all of your website’s pages)

To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can easily find attorney-prepared downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms

Another option is to purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

These templates were written by an attorney and 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 legal pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
• 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 WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described previously.

More info:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using cut & paste templates, you can simplify things using plugins.

Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.

Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin 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 a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your navigation menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)

Select from several built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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 this site to learn more this useful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 & Conditions
• 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress 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 the plugin on all of your sites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some type of basic legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your site to be legally safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with government laws and regulations and the terms of service and guidelines provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on our website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet 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
• BBB – 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
• 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 provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple legal resources and solutions.

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