As a website owner, the last thing you want to do is to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
As the digital way of life continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having an online presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau)
The introduction of new laws affect various online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a range of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Additionally, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be endorsing online, and that there are solutions that can help your sites become compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.
Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you endorse on your website or blog
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider for a minute what would happen to your business if these scenarios were to happen:
- A user suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their website.
- You have not divulged to visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you may earn a commission if visitors end up purchasing using your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy in your product review.
- Your website contains adult information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to issue everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed 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 to the Google program 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 targeted for litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all site users.
Complying With Third-Party Companies
All the big companies and government agencies that regulate trade in many countries emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site users know that your website complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will do business with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using their products or service. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue with your WordPress sites using Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
Or promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell products online with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages before your products are approved for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for product sellers)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been 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 money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC regulations.
A number of resources online provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See our additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop apps for your site users, 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 unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products online via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, 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 policies and guidelines)
Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website
If your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to look into including any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets users know that you will not receive any kind of payment for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your readers that you will derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets your visitors know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have been compensated in some form 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users can access legal information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Using Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
To learn more, go here:
Another option is to download a package of cut & paste website legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal 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 insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described earlier.
More information:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using cut & paste legal templates, you can keep things really simple by using plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your 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 checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear inside your navigation menu section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Type of Site dropdown menu)
Choose from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal 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 plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites that contains over twenty customizable legal pages for your site …
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 of Use
- 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 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 this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
For more details, go here:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a lawyer.
We want your website to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online, you need to ensure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or endorsing online. Your internet presence must comply with a number of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even be aware of.
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 do not offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law regarding your specific business.
Legal Resources & References
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require to remain compliant 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
- 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
In Addition …
- 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
- AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
- ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
- Facebook Platform Policies
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and cost-effective methods and solutions.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum