Category: WordPress Configuration

If you plan to grow a successful business online, you do not want to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital era continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your web presence plays a significant part in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The introduction of new laws has ramifications for several online business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be selling online, and that there are solutions that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the tools listed further below.

Is Your Website Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations in your country or region.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be if the following were to take place:

• A person has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing prospective subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with their personal details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website letting your site users know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing and may derive a sales commission if they purchase using your affiliate link.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• A visitor claims your testimonials are misleading and tries to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider also these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• 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 details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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 infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could become exposed to the risks of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to make sure that your online business stays legally compliant.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You are required to let your site users know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your blog using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

Or promoting your products using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information-based products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are 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 do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

Many online resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to develop apps that will integrate with your website, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide 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., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use 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 shut down.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to 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)

Basic Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website

If you suspect that your website is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help your site keep out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimer Pages
• 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:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides financial information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets site users be aware that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you may derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product you’re writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some form 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 website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legal directory in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

You can then easily add links to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu admin area …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your site) so that visitors will be able to access the information from all of your web pages …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• Using Widgets

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here for more details:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a set of cut and paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms 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 on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: includes 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 added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.

More info:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using copy & paste templates, you can keep things very simple using plugins.

Here are some great WordPress plugins that you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time and effort.

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When a user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your WordPress dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

Select from several pre-configured legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this useful plugin, visit this site:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal page templates for your online business …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(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 Service
• 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. 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).

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of 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 a lawyer.

We want your site to be safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal content, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

***

As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website complies with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service of third-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your website or blog must comply with a number of regulations, 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.

Resources

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

• FTC 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
• United States Copyright Office

Plus …

• 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

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 above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and cost-effective methods and solutions.

***