Category: Management Plugins

If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for commercial gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect various business categories, including:

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

If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a number of advertising and online marketing networks.

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

This guide explains the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website using simple methods and resources.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?

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

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be if the situations below were to happen:

• A person suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you’ll do with their personal details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending and could derive a commission if visitors purchase it.
• You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
• Visitors claim that your testimonials are fake and decide to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy of the product you are reviewing.
• Your site includes adult information and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider now the following real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give a copy of the judgement to everyone he does 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 private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. 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 independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a website owner can easily be exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website stays legally compliant.

Complying With Third-Party Services

Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

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

Here are just some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your blog with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

Or promoting your products using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell digital products through companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling products through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically results in 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 chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with FTC regulations.

Many online resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …

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

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you plan to develop apps 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 unsure whether or not 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 plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay 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 need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve been wondering whether “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, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site

If your website falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help you keep out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into implementing any of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides financial information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – This lets users be aware that you will not receive for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you will consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers 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 creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

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

You can then easily add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your site) so that visitors can access legal information from every web page …

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

To learn more about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar using widgets, see this tutorial:

• Adding WordPress Widgets To Your Sidebar Navigation Section

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Visit this website to learn more:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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 insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

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

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Plugins

As well as using templates, you can keep things very simple using plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

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

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

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear in your main dashboard area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

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

(WP Legal Pages – 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

Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 – 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 plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional legal services.

We want your site to be safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate essential 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 do business online, it’s important that your site complies with all government legal requirements and any guidelines and terms of service provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or selling online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous regulations, many of which you may not even be aware of.

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 do not offer legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet its 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 – 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
• US Copyright Office

And …

• 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 provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site using simple resources and solutions.

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