Tag: Legal Pages

If you plan to grow a successful business online, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have done something illegal.

As digital business continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s absolutely essential to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an essential factor in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to 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 departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

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

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

Without certain 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, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in many advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

If your business online is not in compliance, you could end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this guide, we look at the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

Does Your Site Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you offer

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A user suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you’ll do with the information you have collected.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website making your site users aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and may derive an affiliate commission if they purchase using your affiliate link.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund and return policies.
• Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are all fake and tries to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose that you have received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
• Your website publishes adult information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider now these actual 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 to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’ve also been 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 received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 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 breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to become exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

It’s imperative to ensure that your online business is fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You are required to let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your website with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your site through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information-based products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add various legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is 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 unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your website complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.

Many business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you plan to create applications that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services on your site using affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

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

Basic Legal Pages To Include In Your Website

If you suspect that your website lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into including one or more of these pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add the right disclosures to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets readers know that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you will derive some form of financial or similar kind of benefit if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Content To Your Site

Ideally, you should consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually

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

We recommend creating a legals folder in your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory using FTP …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors can access the information from every page …

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer, see this tutorial:

• How To Add Widgets To Your WordPress Sidebar Area

Using Ready-Made Templates

You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• ToS & 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 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 web server as described previously.

Go here to learn more:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

As well as using copy & paste legal templates, you can keep things really simple using a plugin.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs you may be interested in using:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using WP Legal Pages …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.

Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be 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 WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your legal terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your navigation menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page type menu)

Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites that contains over 20 customizable legal page templates for your online presence …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

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 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 site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a legal expert.

We want your business to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate 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, you need to ensure that your site complies with all laws and regulations and any terms of service and guidelines provided by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

References And Resources

Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to comply and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• 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
• 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
• US Copyright Office

See 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 this article 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 website or blog.

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