If you plan to grow a successful business online, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you have been operating on the wrong side of the law.
Online laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws has legal consequences for various online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, including contextual ads
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a number of advertising or online merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website or blog(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern online businesses, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be offering online, and that there are plugins for WordPress that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements 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 services or products you offer on your website or blog
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if these situations were to happen:
- Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness program.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives someone skin rashes.
- You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with their details.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website informing your site users that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing and could derive a commission if visitors buy it.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider too these real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered 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 copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 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% 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 they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could be exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s imperative to make sure that your online business is fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information if using their services. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your blog using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their network …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially if you plan to sell products online using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting 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 physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines.
Many sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources at the end of this article …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to develop social networking applications for your website users, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using Google AdWords 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Compliance Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Compliant?
If your web site is lacking in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help your website keep out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides information about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Informs site users that you may derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets your readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- 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 Legal Content To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can add these to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) so that users can access legal information from every page …
(Display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar using widgets here:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
To learn more, visit this site:
Another option is to download a package of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- 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 each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
More info:
WordPress Legal Plugins
As well as using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages:
- Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to your legal 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 menu feature will be added to your dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, niche websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)
Select from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
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 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 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.
Go here for more details:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a lawyer.
We want your site to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, you need to make sure that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet 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
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
Also …
- 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
- 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 compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie