One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not protect someone from taking legal action against you.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
The introduction of new laws has implications for several online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website are required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be recommending on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be if the following were to take place:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online workout program.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives someone an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you will do with the information you have collected.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site letting your visitors know that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and could derive a sales commission if visitors purchase it.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
- Visitors claim your testimonials are false and decide to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy of the product in your review.
- Your website contains adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider too the documented examples of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give a copy of the judgement to everyone he does 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 prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being targeted for non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog is legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade in many countries emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You are obligated to let your site users know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using their services or product features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your blog with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add legal pages before your products are approved for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure 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 websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically 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 does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
Various resources online provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See our additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to create social networking applications for your website users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about your legal pages …
(Apps that integrate with social networks also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies)
Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your website or blog is lacking 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 keep you out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into adding one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general 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 videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets users know that you are not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you will derive some form of financial or similar form of benefit if they buy through your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets readers be aware that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to your readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory on your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily 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 kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your site) so that users will be able to access the information from every web page …
(Display links to legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your WordPress sidebar here:
Legal Templates
You can find attorney-prepared downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More info:
Another option is to purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission guidelines brought into effect on 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 website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as previously described.
For more information, go here:
WordPress Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, you can simplify things using plugins.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins you may be interested in checking out:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time.
Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When a user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate websites, medical sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)
Select from various pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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 the benefits of using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 Service
- 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 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 license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
For more information, go here:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing some type of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a lawyer.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate basic 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 any kind of business online, it’s important that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your specific business.
References And Resources
Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant 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
- 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
- United States Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site.
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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)