If you plan to grow a successful business online, you do not want to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
As digital business continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws affect several business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, including inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising or online merchant networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a legally compliant website and present simple solutions to make your website or blog compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. You must do 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 in your country or region.
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Consider for one moment what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an adverse reaction.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website letting your site visitors know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you will earn an affiliate commission if visitors end up buying using your link.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you because of it.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider now 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 to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent 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 breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could be exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s imperative to make sure that your online business is fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies
All the leading websites and government agencies that regulate trade in various countries emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You are expected to let your site users know that your website complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you do business with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue online with your site using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically results in 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 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.
Various business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to create applications for your site users, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Apps that integrate with social networks also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need 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’ve been wondering whether “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 third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Legal Information Does My Website Need To Be Compliant?
If you suspect that your website falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your business stay out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right disclosure information to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets your visitors know that you are not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you may derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
- 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 Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all your pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal information on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer here:
Use Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates 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
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.
More information:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things very simple using a plugin.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages:
- Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear in your main WP dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings)
With WP Legal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Type of Site drop down menu)
Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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 this great plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 Use
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
Go here for more info:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a lawyer.
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 legal page templates, or plugins as described in the 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 Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
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 in this article. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
References And Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission 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 …
- 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
- 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 add legal pages to your website or blog using simple and cost-effective resources and plugins.
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