Category: Engagement Plugins

One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to break the law.

As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence is a fundamental factor in your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly 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 agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “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)

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

• Any kind of advertising, like contextual advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

If your online presence is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

This article explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and describes inexpensive methods to make your website or blog legally compliant quickly and easily.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if any of the following scenarios were to happen:

• A person suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you’ll do with the information you’ve collected.
• Someone steals content from your site and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your site letting your visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re marketing and may receive an affiliate commission if they buy it through your link.
• You didn’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and decide to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy in a product review.
• Your website publishes adult content and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider now these real 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. Cost = $390,000.
• 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 private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least 2 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 easy it is to be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

You need to make sure that your digital presence remains fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you engage with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their products or service. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue online with your site with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

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

(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services with the aid of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with 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 plan to do any kind of business 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 by making sure that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide references and links to resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to develop apps for your website users, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with 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 service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display 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, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies)

What Compliance Information Does Your Website Need To Be Insured Against Legal Compliance Issues?

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

Adding the following legal pages to your site should help your business stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into including one or more of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. 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 (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you will not be receiving any form of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets users be aware that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Informs users that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors 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 your lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, 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 HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

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

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that users have access to the information from all your pages …

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

For a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Site

Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut & paste legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your 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
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

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

Go here for more information:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

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

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

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

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

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

Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Legal 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 legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress 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 WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your terms.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will be added to your WordPress dashboard menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

You can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

You can also choose from several built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – 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 using this great plugin, visit the plugin site:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 Use
• 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 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Go here for more details:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

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 ready-made legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or recommending online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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 cannot provide 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 is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet 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 – BBB
• 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

Additionally …

• 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
• 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website using inexpensive methods and resources.

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