Category: Management Plugins

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

As the digital way of life continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vital to try and stay informed about what’s going on and make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.

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

(Better Business Bureau)

The new laws affect various business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, like pay-per-click advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

Without certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed into various advertising or online marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website(s) are subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be endorsing online, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you promote

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A person has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you’ll do with the information you have collected.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your visitors know that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and will receive a commission if visitors purchase it.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you because of it.
• You did not disclose that you have received a free copy in your product review.
• Your website contains adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider too these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• 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 dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 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% were in violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 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 becoming targeted for litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all you site users.

Compliance With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies

All the big online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You must let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with.

For example:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your WordPress blog using Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

And even promoting your products using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products via merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines.

Many sites provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide links to and additional references to some of these at the end of this article …

(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you are planning to create applications 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 sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering 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 policies and guidelines)

Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site

If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your website keep out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and external service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into adding any of these pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Discloses to readers that you will not receive compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to visitors that you will benefit financially if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to your readers that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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 Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal verbiage 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 directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

You can then easily add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying 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 your sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors can access the information from every page …

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

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

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar Navigation Menu

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

More information:

• FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms

Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages)

These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• 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 each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.

For more details, go here:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates

Legal Pages – Plugins

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

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

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages)

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

This plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you a great deal of time.

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• 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 easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any other WP page.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then 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 page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature is added to your main navigation area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)

Choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 WordPress plugin, visit this website:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over 20 customizable compliance templates for your digital presence …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a lawyer.

We want your website 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 attorney-drafted legal documentation, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, 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 are not offering legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Legal Information

Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply 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 – 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

Additionally …

• Google 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
• 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 legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your site.

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