Category: Engagement Plugins

One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.

As digital business continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important that you try to stay informed about 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 important in the success of your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, 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 for more details.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The introduction of these new laws has consequences for several online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, like Google AdWords
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• 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 sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into most advertising or online marketing networks.

If your business online is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website(s) are subject to legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be endorsing on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A user suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement letting subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with the information you have collected.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your website letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are promoting that you could derive an affiliate commission if they buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you because of it.
• You have not disclosed that you received a free copy of the product you are reviewing.
• Your site contains adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider also these documented examples 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 copped 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 does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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 chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking 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 they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a business owner can easily become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website has the right legal pages and information accessible to site users.

Complying With Third-Party Services

All the leading companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.

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

For example:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your site using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information-based products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for selling via their networks …

(Policy requirements digital product vendors using ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations.

Various resources online provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

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

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products on your site via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or using 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 provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

What Legal Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Legally Compliant?

If 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 website should help you keep out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

As well as the above pages, you may want to consider including any of these legal pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides money-making information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you are not receiving any form of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Informs readers that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your Website

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or the footer section of your site) so that visitors can access legal information from every page …

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

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

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Site

Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared website forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here for more details:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms

Another option is to download a package of cut and paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website 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 Website Legal Forms include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

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

More info:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages)

If manually setting up legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages …

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

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

• Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when user agrees to your legal terms.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)

Select from several pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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

To learn more about using this plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that includes over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your web presence …

For an in-depth article about this plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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 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 site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.

We want your business to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose 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 engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with government laws and regulations and the terms of service and guidelines provided by 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed 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 offer no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

References And Resources

Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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
• AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
• ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
• Facebook Platform Policies

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website.

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