As a business owner, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent someone from taking legal action against you.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws affect various business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, like display advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- 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, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in a range of advertising or online marketing networks.
If your web presence is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This guide explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.
Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. As stated above, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws governing business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party companies whose services or products you endorse
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider what could happen to your business if these scenarios were to occur:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness program.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users skin rashes.
- You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not defined what you will do with it.
- Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your visitors aware that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and will earn financial benefits if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
- Online visitors claim your testimonials are false and try to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult content and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider also the following documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to provide 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 information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk 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-chosen websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 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 targeted for litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
it’s important to make sure that your website is fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Compliance with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are required to let your site visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your website with Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information-based products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
New 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 ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often 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 plan to do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources at the end of this article …
(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 develop social networking applications for your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to your legal pages …
(Apps for social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Legal Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Compliant?
If your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help your site keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above pages, you may want to look into including any of these pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Discloses to site users that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies your readers that you will be compensated if they purchase through your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Disclosure that informs readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to readers that you were compensated in some way 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Site
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal verbiage 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 adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add links to these pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that users have access to legal information from all your pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
Go here for more information:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …
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 simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & 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 added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as described previously.
For more details, go here:
Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using legal templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins you may be interested in using:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you loads of headaches.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog 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 WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks only when the user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear in your WordPress dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
With WPLegal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
Select from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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
To learn more this handy plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 Service
- 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here to learn more:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. Your website or blog must comply with various regulations, some of which you may not even be aware of.
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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
Additional Information
Here is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to help you 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
- Better Business Bureau Website
- 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
And …
- 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 this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)