Category: Engagement Plugins

One of the worst situations a business owner can find themselves in is to break the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against your business.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for commercial gain, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “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 categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, like Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

This guide explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and presents inexpensive solutions that will make your WordPress website compliant.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice in this article. As previously stated, the aim of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you recommend

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider for one moment what could happen to your business if these scenarios were to occur:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
• You haven’t advised your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing and could get paid a commission if they buy using your link.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund policies.
• Online visitors claim your testimonials are false and decide to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider too the following real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. 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 private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two 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 notices 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 easy it is to risk being targeted for litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

it’s important to ensure that your online business stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Complying with third-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 increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you interact with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their products and features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your websites with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your products via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information-based products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often 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 do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.

Various business resource sites provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(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 create applications for your website users, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Compliance Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Legally Compliant?

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

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

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

Additionally, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets your readers be aware that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you will benefit financially if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets site users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Content To Your Site

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

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

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

You can then easily add a link to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Website

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from every web page …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer, see this tutorial:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar

Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

For more information, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

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 insert your own business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as previously described.

For more details, visit this website:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates

Legal Page Plugins

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

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

WordPress Legal Pages

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

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

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you time.

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:

• Built-in 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 your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like every other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)

With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, niche sites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)

Select from several pre-configured legal templates …

(WP 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 And 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 this plugin on all of your websites.

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.

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 templates, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website complies with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines for 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.

Being non-compliant 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 do not provide legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your specific business.

Legal Resources

Below is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:

• FTC 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

Plus …

• 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website.

***