Category: Engagement Plugins

If you plan to grow a successful business online, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you have done something illegal.

As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s absolutely vital that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

These laws affect various business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

Without certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not 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 promote a range of advertising or online marketing networks.

If you are not compliant, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this guide, we look at why it’s important to have a compliant website and describe inexpensive methods and solutions that will make your website or blog compliant in minutes.

Is Your Website Legally Compliant?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you offer

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for one minute what could happen to your business if the scenarios below were to occur:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online workout program.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement that lets subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their website.
• You did not tell visitors that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and could receive a sales commission if visitors purchase it.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Visitors claim that your testimonials are fake and try to sue you.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult information and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider too the real examples of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• 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 details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many 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 randomly-chosen 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 breaking 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 to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being exposed to non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

It’s imperative to ensure that your online business has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all site visitors.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

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

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

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information if using their products or service. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue online with your website with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your site using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for selling via their networks …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for sellers)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see 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 companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type 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 by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

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

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

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

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, 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 are required to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

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

Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Website

If your website is falling short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to look into adding one or more of these legal pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides content about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add the right types of disclosure pages to your site. For example:

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

How To Add Legal Content To Your WordPress Website

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

Upload Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage 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 legals folder in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access the information from all pages …

(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your site’s pages)

If you need help adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Using Ready-Made Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)

Go here for more information:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a set of cut & paste legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

You can either create a new WordPress page 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.

Go here for more details:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, you can keep things very simple by using a plugin.

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

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages instead …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable 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 a great deal of time.

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

• Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal 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 just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

You have the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, niche sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)

You can also choose from various pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress 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

For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …

Learn We’ve written a detailed article about this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 Plugin For WordPress – 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

To learn more, visit this site:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal firm.

We want your website to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your internet presence must comply with a wide range of regulations, many of which you may not be aware of.

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, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on our website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Additional Legal Information

Here is a useful list of websites 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
• US Copyright Office

Also …

• 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site using simple and inexpensive methods, resources and plugins.

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