Category: Engagement Plugins

If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want is to find yourself breaking any laws, rules or regulations.

As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s absolutely essential to try and stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if having an online presence is a fundamental factor in your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material 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, also called the BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

These laws has ramifications for various business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of advertising or online marketing networks.

If you are not in compliance, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

This guide explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider for one moment what the implications to your business would be if any of these situations were to take place:

• A person suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness program.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
• You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your site informing visitors that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you will receive a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
• You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are misleading and decides to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed that you received a free copy of the product in your review.
• Your site contains adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider now the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. 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 children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had infringed 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 to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risks of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to make sure that your website remains legally compliant.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

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

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

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information if using many of their products or features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your WordPress blog with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

And even promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, 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 kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines.

A number of online resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet 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)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

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

(Apps for social networks also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, 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 need to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

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

If your web site lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

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

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

In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general money-making advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Informs site users that you will not receive any kind of compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will derive some form of financial or similar kind of benefit if they buy through your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets visitors be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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.

Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Site

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

We recommend adding a legal directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your site) so that visitors have access to legal information from all your pages …

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

To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• Adding Widgets To Your WordPress Sidebar

Templates

You can find attorney-drafted downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a set of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)

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 insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal 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
• FTC 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 page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described earlier.

More info:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

As well as using cut & paste templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress sites you may be interested in using:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages)

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

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

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

• Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal 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 a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your site.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When a user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature is added to your main dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Area)

With WPLegal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)

You can also select from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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

Go here to learn more this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

This 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 Plugin – 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 this plugin on all of your websites.

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal content, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As stated earlier, if you are making money online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with government legal requirements and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing online. Your internet presence must comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, some 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 do not offer 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 the law pertaining to your business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires 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
• 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

In Addition …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple resources and WordPress plugins.

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