One of the worst situations a business owner can find themselves in is to be on the wrong side of the law.
As the digital economy continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
The new laws has legal implications for various online business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in many advertising and online marketing networks.
If you are not compliant, you could face a number 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) are required to comply with various legalities in accordance with the laws that govern online business practices, the importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be recommending on your site, and that there are plugins for WordPress users that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever your business is based.
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Consider for one moment what the implications to your business would be if these situations were to take place:
- A user suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you will do with their details.
- Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you are recommending a product as an affiliate that you will earn a sales commission if they buy products via your link.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your return policies.
- Your visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and decide to sue you.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider too these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk 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 websites chosen at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking 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 with warnings 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 easy it is to risk becoming targeted for litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords User
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site users know that your website complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will engage with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their services or product features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your website with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information products via merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind 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. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your site complies with FTC regulations.
You can find many online resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you 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 laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance
If you are planning to develop applications for your website users, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Apps that integrate with social networking sites 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 sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Basic Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website
If you suspect that your web site lacks in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to consider including any of the pages listed below if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets your visitors know that you’re not receiving any form of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Discloses to users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re writing about by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs your visitors that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal verbiage 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 server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then add links to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access legal information from every page …
(It’s important to display legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can find attorney-prepared downloadable internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
Go here for more information:
Another option is to download a set of legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal pages were created 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 web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms 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 added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described previously.
Go here for more information:
Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will be added to your main WordPress dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)
Select from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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
Go here to learn more about using this great plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs containing over 20 customizable compliance pages for your digital business …
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
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 And Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress – 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. 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 the plugin on all of your websites.
More info:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your website to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a WordPress legal pages 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 Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online and any terms of service and guidelines for 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Better Business Bureau Website
- 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
Also …
- 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
- 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 presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and inexpensive legal resources and solutions.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)