Category: Engagement Plugins

One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to 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 BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect various online business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, e.g. pay-per-click advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

If your online business is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

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

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you endorse

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if any of these scenarios were to occur:

• A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives someone an adverse reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not defined what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog informing your site visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending and may earn a financial benefit if they buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are fake and tries to sue you as a result.
• You didn’t disclose that you have received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
• Your site includes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider too the actual examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet 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 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% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 entirely to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence remains fully compliant with the law.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies

Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

You must let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will engage with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information if using their services and features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your blogs using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information-based products via merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling through ClickBank)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners 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 any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

There are many resources online that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to develop applications for your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about your legal pages …

(Apps for social networking sites also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If your website lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

• About Us Page
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider implementing any 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 provides financial advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you’re not being paid for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your readers that you may be compensated if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets site users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users know that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets readers know 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in typical web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legals directory on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages using FTP)

You can then add links to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors have access to the information from every page …

(Display legal pages to visitors on all of your website’s pages)

We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu here:

• How To Add Widgets To The WordPress Sidebar Section

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

To learn more, go here:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

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

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described earlier.

To learn more, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Legal Pages)

If setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you many headaches.

Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal 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 around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree 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 menu feature will be added to your WordPress dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)

Select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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

Visit this website to learn more this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that contains over 20 customizable legal page templates for your online business …

Go here to learn more about the plugin:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 & Conditions
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro – 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 powered 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 the plugin on all of your sites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your business to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal page templates, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.

Additional Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• 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
• 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
• United States Copyright Office

In Addition …

• Google 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 this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add legal pages to your site.

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