Category: WordPress Configuration

One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t protect someone from taking legal action against you.

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

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

These laws affect various online business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, including Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could reject web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this article, we discuss why it’s important to have a compliant website and list simple solutions that will help make your site compliant in minutes.

Does Your Site Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever you do business.

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider for one moment what could happen to your business if any of the situations below were to happen:

• A customer has a heart attack after they use your online workout program.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you’ll do with their personal details.
• Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website making visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are marketing that you may receive an affiliate commission if visitors buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
• Someone claims your testimonials are misleading and decides to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy in your product review.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider now these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’re now required to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 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 violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

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

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

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

You are expected to let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using their products. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your online properties with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell products online through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add a number of legal pages before your products can be approved for sale in their network …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product sellers)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners 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 any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC guidelines.

You can find many sites that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide 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 if “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 websites require you to comply with their policies)

What Legal Information Should I Add To My Website To Be Compliant?

If your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right type of disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets users know that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to your readers that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample Or review Copy – Explains to your visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets readers be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 Legal Pages To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage 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 adding a legal directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages via FTP)

You can then add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) so that users can access the information from all your pages …

(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar, see this step-by-step tutorial:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar Section

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a package of website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

These legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

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 server as described previously.

Go here for more information:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms

WordPress Legal Plugins

In addition to using templates, another option is to use plugins.

Here are some WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

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

Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• 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.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress 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 check box and delete and manage these like any WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your terms.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your WP dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, review sites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

You can also select from several built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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

For more details about this useful plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

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 of Service
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress powered 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 this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.

We want your website to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As stated earlier, if you make money online, you need to ensure that your website complies with all legal requirements and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. Your digital presence must comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even be aware of.

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 are not providing legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements regarding your specific business.

Legal Information

Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to comply and meet its legal obligations:

• 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 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
• US 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog using simple methods, resources and plugins.

***