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.

As the digital economy continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you try to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if having a digital presence plays an important part in your business strategy.

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

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

The introduction of new laws affect several business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including contextual advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in many advertising and online marketing networks.

If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a number 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(s) may be required to comply with various legalities in accordance with the laws that govern your business, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be using online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.

Is Your Website Breaking The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. As stated above, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you promote

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A user has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an adverse reaction.
• You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your site informing your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you are marketing that you will receive a commission if they buy it through your affiliate link.
• You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund policies.
• Your visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and decide to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed that you received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
• Your website contains adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider now these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation 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 with the infringement, 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:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

it’s important to ensure that your website or blog is fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies

Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You must let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with online.

For example:

Google requires your site to display legal information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your site using Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell products online using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add a number of legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for selling products through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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 located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

Various online resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the additional references and 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 laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to create applications for your site users, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether 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 online via affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)

Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site

If your website or blog lacks in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

• About Us Page
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

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

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

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 creating a legals folder in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website

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

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets, see this tutorial:

• Adding WordPress Widgets To The Sidebar Navigation Section

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted website forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More information:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

Another option is to purchase a set of legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were created 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 Website Legal Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, 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 page for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.

More information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

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

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

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

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

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages:

• Built-in 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 just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your site.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then 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 other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear in your main navigation menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

You can also choose from various pre-configured 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

Visit the plugin website to learn more about using this handy plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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 site. Your legal pages can be 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 this plugin on all of your sites.

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a solicitor.

We want your site to be legally safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with government regulations and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.

References And Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to comply 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
• 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

And …

• 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 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 site using inexpensive methods and solutions.

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