Category: WordPress Plugins

As a business owner, you do not want to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t 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 site for profit, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines 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.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

The introduction of these new laws has consequences for various business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, like text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If you do not include certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in various advertising and online marketing networks.

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

In this guide, we discuss why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and list inexpensive solutions that will help make your site compliant in minutes.

Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose services or products you offer

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A person has a heart attack after using your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you’ll do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
• You haven’t informed visitors that you are recommending a product as an affiliate that you will receive a commission if they buy products through your link.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim that your testimonials are false and decide to sue you.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website includes adult information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider now the following documented case studies 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 information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he was also ordered 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 was slapped with a massive $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 UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ 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 infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 notices or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• 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 complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You must let your visitors know that your business complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you engage with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information when using their services or product features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue online with your blogs using Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information-based products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for selling via their network …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners for breaches of regulation 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 any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines.

Various online business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide links to useful and additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, 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 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, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

Basic Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your web site lacks in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you will be compensated if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Explains to site users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors will be able to access legal information from every web page …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets here:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• 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 each 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 web server as described earlier.

Go here to learn more:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …

This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.

Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page 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 a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any other page on your site.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your WP dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

You can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)

You can also choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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 website for more information about this powerful plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

For a detailed article about this plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(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 And Conditions
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 websites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.

We want your site to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet its 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 – 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

And …

• Google Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• Google 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 add essential legal pages to your site using simple resources and solutions.

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