Category: Management Plugins

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

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

New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau)

These laws affect several online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, e.g. pay-per-click advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising and online merchant networks.

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

In this guide, we discuss why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and explain simple methods and solutions to make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for one minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A person suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website letting your site users know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing that you will derive a commission if they buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you as a result.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a massive $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 UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them 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% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could become exposed to the risks of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to ensure that your website complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

You are required to let your visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will engage with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires your site to display legal information when using their products. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue with your blogs using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products through merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their network …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially if you plan to sell or promote online using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often 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 plan to do any kind of money-making activity 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 making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations.

Many online resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to develop social networking applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations 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 monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, 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 shut down.
• If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

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

Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your website keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into including any of the following pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general money-making information)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the correct type of disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets visitors be aware that you will not be receiving any type of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Discloses to readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets site users be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets your 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

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

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

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

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

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

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Site

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, visit this website:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms

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

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(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 search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations brought into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add 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 previously described.

For more information, go here:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using copy & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.

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

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time.

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

• Pre-written Templates – Includes 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 need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages like any other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will 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 page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When a user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Page type dropdown menu)

Select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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

Visit the plugin site to learn more about using this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin

The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …

Learn We have written an in-depth review of this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

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 at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a legal expert.

We want your website to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or a plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, 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 is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of third-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect 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, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.

Additional Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• 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

See Also …

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

We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site using simple solutions.

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