Category: Management Plugins

One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital way of life continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules keep changing, it’s absolutely vital to try and stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your web presence plays a significant role in your business strategy.

Recent 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 profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, 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 for more details.

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

The introduction of these laws affect various business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, including text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t let you list digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you will not be accepted into various advertising and online marketing networks.

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

This article explains the importance of having a compliant website and lists simple and inexpensive ways to help make your site legally compliant.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. As stated previously, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you offer

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if the scenarios below were to happen:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online workout program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users skin rashes.
• You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with it.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their site.
• There is no statement on your website letting your site visitors know that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and may earn a sales commission if visitors purchase through your link.
• You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and try to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider also these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’re now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping 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 independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 entirely to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being targeted for non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website has the right legal pages and information accessible to site users.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies

Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade in various countries emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.

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

For example:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their services and product features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue with your blog with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information-based products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for selling via their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC regulations.

Various business resource sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to create social networking applications that will integrate with your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide access to your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products online via affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• 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.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Website

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

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

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

Additionally, you may want to look into adding any of these legal pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides financial advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms (if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets site users be aware that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you will receive compensation if they buy through an affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets users be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your readers that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• 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.

How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Site

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

We recommend creating a legal folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that visitors can access legal information from all of your pages …

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

For a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Blog

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More information:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal templates were written by an attorney and 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 Forms include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & 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 WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.

For more details, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using legal templates, you can simplify things using a plugin.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

If setting up legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

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

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your main WordPress dashboard menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Type of Site menu)

Choose from several pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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 using this useful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …

Learn more about this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 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 license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring 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 professional assistance from a lawyer.

We want your business to be legally protected!

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

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you are making money online, you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of third-party products and services that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

Legal Resources And References

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to comply and meet its legal obligations:

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

In Addition …

• 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

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

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