Category: WordPress Plugins

One of the worst things that can happen to you as a business owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

The new laws affect several business activities, including:

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

Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning 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 may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote various advertising or online merchant networks.

If your web presence is not compliant, you could face a multitude 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 are required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering on your site, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress that can help your online properties become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider what could happen to your business if these situations were to happen:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
• You’ve told subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you’ll do with it.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site letting your site users know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you could receive a commission if visitors purchase it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you as a result.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy in a product review.
• Your website publishes adult-related information and you didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider too these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer copped a massive $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 internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 with warnings 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 becoming exposed to litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

You need to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With Third-Party Services

Complying with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you interact with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information when using their products or service. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue with your blogs using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information-based products via merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will be required to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services with the aid of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of selling 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 website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

A number of resources online provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide references and links to additional resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you are planning to create apps for your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon 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 all 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 protect yourself and your business.

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

Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If your website lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of these pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets your visitors be aware that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you may benefit financially if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Discloses to site users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing.
• Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors know that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you will consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legal folder on your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that users can access the information from all pages …

(It’s important to display legal information to users on all of your site’s pages)

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar Navigation Area

Using Ready-Made Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a set of cut and paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect in 2012)
• 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 every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.

Visit this site to learn more:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)

If creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you many headaches.

Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your main dashboard menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)

With WP Legal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)

Select from a number of pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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 plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that contains over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your site …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(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 Use
• 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 powered site. Your legal pages can be 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 this plugin on all of your websites.

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your site to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator 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 any type of business online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of 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 are not offering legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law regarding your specific business.

Resources

Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to comply and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• United States 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
• 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using inexpensive methods and solutions.

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