Category: Management Plugins

One of the worst predicaments a website owner can find themselves in is to be on the wrong side of the law.

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

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you must 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. 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 Website)

These laws affect several business activities, including:

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

If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

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

In this guide, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site.

Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. As stated above, the aim of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you use on your website or blog

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider for a moment what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A user has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you will do with it.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are promoting and will receive a commission if they decide to buy using your affiliate link.
• You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• Online visitors claim your testimonials are false and decide to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
• Your site contains adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider also the actual examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give everyone they do 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 from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming exposed to litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• 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 complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will interact with online.

For example:

Google requires you to display certain information if using many of their services and product features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your WordPress sites with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information-based products using companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their network …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)

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

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

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

There are many resources online that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to create apps for your website, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Apps that interface with social networks also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay 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 need to display on your site to comply with their 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 avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

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

Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site

If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider implementing any of these pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides information about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add correct disclosures to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Discloses to users that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will benefit financially if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

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

We recommend creating a legals directory in your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …

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

You can then easily add links to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) so that visitors have access to legal information from every page …

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

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets, see this tutorial:

• How To Add Widgets To The WordPress Blog Sidebar

Legal Templates

You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here for more details:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a set of website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal templates 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 details, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal templates 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 Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• 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 added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.

For more information, go here:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things very simple using a plugin.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.

Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Legal 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 legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other page on your website.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear inside your main dashboard menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

With WP Legal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

You can also select from several pre-configured 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 this website to learn more about this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable legal page templates for your digital business …

Go here to learn more about this plugin:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 & Conditions
• 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 the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your business to be protected!

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 templates, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate necessary 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 (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website complies with government legal requirements and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or using online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, 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 in this article. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Legal Resources & References

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to comply and meet legal obligations:

• 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

And …

• 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site using simple and cost-effective methods and resources.

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