Tag: Legal Pages

If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want is to suddenly find out that you have been operating on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital way of life continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s absolutely essential to try and stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence plays an important role in your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)

The introduction of these laws has legal ramifications for various online business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, like Google AdWords or AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not approve digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you will not be allowed into many advertising or online marketing networks.

In addition, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your site(s) may be subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be using on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws wherever your business is based in.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be if these situations were to happen:

• A person has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion 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 spelled out exactly what you’ll do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
• You haven’t advised your site users that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you will earn an affiliate commission if visitors buy it.
• You did not spell out the terms of your refund and return policies.
• Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and try to sue you.
• You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy of a product you are reviewing.
• Your site contains adult information and you have not taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider also the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. 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% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 to the Google program with the infringement, 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 litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

it’s important to ensure that your website or blog remains legally compliant.

Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

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

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you interact with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their products and service. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your WordPress blog using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell digital products using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this will most likely prompt 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 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 interests by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC regulations and guidelines.

Many online business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to resources at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

If you are planning to create applications for your website users, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site using affiliate marketing, or making money online 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 need to include 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, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

What Compliance Information Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?

If your web site is falling short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

Additionally, you may want to consider adding one or more of the following pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you provide users with access to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets your visitors be aware that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Informs your readers that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review/Sample Copy – Explains to your visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs site users that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
• 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 website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

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

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

You can then easily add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that users have access to legal information from all of your pages …

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

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms

Another option is to purchase a set of legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations that came into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress 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 these to your server as described previously.

More info:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites you should check out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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

This plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.

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

• Pre-written Legal 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 around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other WP page.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be 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 every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your navigation menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)

You can also select from several pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit this website:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your website …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.

We want your site to be protected!

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

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and the guidelines and terms of service of 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended 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 providing legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements regarding your specific business.

References And Legal Resources

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• FTC 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
• US Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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 presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website.

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