Category: Management Plugins

As a website owner, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau)

The introduction of new laws has ramifications for various online business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in many advertising or online merchant networks.

You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website(s) are subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be selling on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you advertise

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for a minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
• You did not tell visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling and will earn financial benefits if they purchase it.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are false and tries to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you were given a free copy in your product review.
• Your site publishes adult information and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider also these real examples 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 to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he is 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 copped a whopping $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 Users IDs. 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% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 entirely 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 exposed to non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to site users.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade in various countries emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You are expected to let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with online.

For example:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using their products or features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

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

(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

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

(Policy requirements for vendors using ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially when using product testimonials or 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. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations.

You can find many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide references and links to additional resources to some of these at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you plan to develop social networking applications for your site users, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

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

What Legal Pages Does My Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?

If you suspect that your website lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues):

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

As well as the above, you may want to consider implementing one or more of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you may receive compensation if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs readers that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Website

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

We recommend creating a legals directory on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory using FTP …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from every page …

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

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

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Blog

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• 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 WordPress page for each 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 described earlier.

More information:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

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

Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If manually setting up legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you time.

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

• Pre-written 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 a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WordPress page.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information is then 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 page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

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

(WP Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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

To learn more about this plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs containing over 20 customizable legal templates for your site …

Go here to learn more about this plugin:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

For more details, visit this website:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your business to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal page templates, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As stated earlier, if you are making money online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any terms of service and guidelines provided by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website must comply with numerous regulations, some of which you may not even be aware of.

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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice here. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.

References And Legal Resources

Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

In Addition …

• Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site.

***