Category: Management Plugins

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

Internet laws are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau)

These laws has legal implications for several business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, e.g. inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

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

If your online business is not compliant, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your site(s) may be subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be endorsing online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you promote

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of the situations below were to happen:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you will do with their details.
• Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog telling your site users that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and could derive a sales commission if visitors buy via your link.
• You did not spell out the terms of your refund or return policies.
• Online visitors claim your testimonials are fake and try to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy in a product review.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage children 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 their personal information (including credit card information to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk 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 randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program 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 litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website has the right legal pages and information accessible to your site visitors.

Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies

Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with.

Here are just some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue with your website with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell digital products via merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines.

Various business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide references and links to useful resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

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

(Apps that integrate with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services online using affiliate marketing, or make money online 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 are required to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to 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 policies)

What Compliance Information Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Legally Compliant?

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

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the pages above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general money-making advice)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

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

Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your 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 (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

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

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu here:

• Configuring WordPress Widgets On The Blog Sidebar

Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here for more information:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

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

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal pages.

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

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

Go here for more details:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

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

Here are some great plugins for WordPress sites you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WP Legal Pages …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you time.

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page 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. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any other WP page.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• 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 lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when the user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

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

(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 Area)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page type menu)

You can also choose from various pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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 website to learn more about this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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 & 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

Go here for more details:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.

We want your business to be safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law regarding your specific business.

Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet its 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 – 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
• United States Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and cost-effective legal resources and solutions.

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