Category: Website Planning

If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect 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 you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau)

The introduction of these laws affect several business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like Google AdWords
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your site(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be recommending online, and that there are solutions for WordPress users that can help your websites become compliant, such as the plugins that we list further below.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you endorse

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if these situations were to take place:

• A customer suffers a heart attack after they use your online workout program.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you will do with it.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website making your visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you could get paid a commission if they purchase it.
• You don’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site contains adult content and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider too these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up 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 from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 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% were breaking 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a website owner can easily become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog remains fully compliant with the law.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services

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

You must let your site visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you do business with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your blogs using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your site through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell digital products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your website complies with FTC guidelines.

Many sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …

(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to 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 anything online via affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with their 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 take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Compliance Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Legally Compliant?

If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your business stay out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):

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

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

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs site users that you will not receive any kind of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs readers that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to your readers that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors be aware that you were 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 satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Pages Manually 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 server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legal directory 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 via FTP)

You can then easily add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

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

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

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

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More information:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a package of cut & paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

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 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 Legal Form Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, 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 web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.

For more details, go here:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress websites and blogs that you should check out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WP Legal Pages instead …

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

Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages:

• Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature is added to your main dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)

You can also choose from various pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress 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

Visit this website to learn more this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs that contains over 20 customizable legal templates for your digital business …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

Legal Suite Pro 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 Use
• 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 powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

To learn more, visit this site:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.

We want your site to be legally protected!

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 documents, or a plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines provided by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. 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 additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires 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
• 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• United States 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 this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and cost-effective methods and solutions.

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