If you do any kind of business online, you do not want to learn the hard way that you are doing something illegal.
Internet laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person 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 the law won’t protect someone from taking legal action against your business.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau)
The new laws has consequences for various online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like contextual advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website are subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be advertising on your website, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider for one moment what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- Someone has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness program.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement informing prospective subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling and could derive financial benefits if visitors purchase it.
- You have not spelled out the terms of your return policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are all fake and decides to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult-related content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider too the documented examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $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 internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation 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 entirely to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s imperative to make sure that your digital presence stays fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies
Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You must let your site users know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue with your site using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will be required to add legal pages to your site before your products are approved for selling via their networks …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to include clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially when using product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, 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 selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your website complies with FTC regulations.
There are many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to develop apps for your website users, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Apps for social networks also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services online via affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, 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 to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help keep you out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets visitors be aware that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets visitors be aware that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Explains to site users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs visitors that you have been compensated in some way 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you will consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add links to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) so that visitors can access legal information from all of your pages …
(Display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar menu here:
Using Ready-Made Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-prepared internet forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, 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 page on your website for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.
Visit this website to learn more:
Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins
As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.
Here are some great legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written 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 – You can set up most of the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any other page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- 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 the user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear in your WP dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
You can also choose from a number of built-in 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
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this useful plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
To learn more, visit this site:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your website to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or selling online. Your digital presence must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, many 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. 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 wherever your business is based.
Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – 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 …
- 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 add all necessary legal pages to your website.
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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)