Category: Management Plugins

One of the worst things that can happen to you as a business owner is to break the law.

As the internet continues growing at such a rapid pace and the rules keep changing, it’s absolutely vital to stay on top of what’s happening and make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws has consequences for various business activities, including:

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

If you do not include certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising or online marketing networks.

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

In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a compliant website and explain simple ways to help make your website compliant.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever your business is based in.

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

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

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with the details you’ve collected.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and may earn financial benefits if they purchase it via your link.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund and return policies.
• Someone claims your testimonials are fake and tries to sue you.
• You did not 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 keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider too these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to give 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 from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• 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, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent 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 2 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 cautions 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 being a target of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s imperative to ensure that your online business stays legally compliant.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

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

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

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using their products and features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your online properties using Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

Or promoting your site through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell digital products using merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially if you plan to sell products using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners 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 chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC regulations.

Many business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you plan to create applications for your website users, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products on your site via affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or use 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 to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered 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, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

What Legal Pages Should I Add To My Site To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?

If your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

In addition to the above, you may want to look into including any of these legal pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Lets your visitors know that you will not receive any type of payment for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you will be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review/Sample Copy – Informs users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you were compensated in some way 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Website

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

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

We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory using FTP …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that visitors will be able to access the information from all pages …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Website

Use Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, visit this website:

• Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms

Alternatively, you can download a set of cut & paste website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

These legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates 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: 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 website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described previously.

Go here for more info:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates

Legal Page Plugins

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

Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users that you may be interested in checking out:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

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

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content 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 site.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when user agrees 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 dashboard menu section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)

Select from various built-in legal templates …

(WP 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

Visit this site for more information about the benefits of using this useful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites containing over twenty customizable legal page templates for your website …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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. You can have legal pages 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.

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then at least consider implementing some type of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal expert.

We want your site to be safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with government regulations and any terms of service and guidelines of 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, 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 cannot offer legal advice on our website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your specific business.

References And Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Plus …

• 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 provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website using simple methods and resources.

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