One of the worst things that can happen to you as a business owner is to break the law.
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not protect someone from taking legal action against your business.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “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 these new laws affect various business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook will reject web applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website or blog(s) may be required to comply with various legalities, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be offering online, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the aim of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws governing business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you endorse
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of these situations were to occur:
- A person suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you will do with it.
- Someone steals content from your site and puts it up on their site.
- There is no statement on your website making your site visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending and could earn a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Online visitors claim your testimonials are all fake and decide to sue you.
- You didn’t disclose that you were given a free copy in your product review.
- Your website includes adult-related content and you have not taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider also the following documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $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 marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 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 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 a website owner can easily be exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to make sure that your website or blog remains fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
All the leading companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will interact with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using many of their services or product features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue with your websites using Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell digital products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling products via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by making sure that your site complies with FTC regulations.
You can find many business resource sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to create apps that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required 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 act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site
If you suspect that your web site falls short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into adding one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides health or medical information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Discloses to visitors that you’re not receiving any type of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing.
- Sponsored Post – Lets readers know that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then add links to your pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors can access legal information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar here:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
For more details, go here:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described previously.
More info:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using copy & paste templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If the idea of creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages like any page on your site.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your dashboard menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)
You can also choose from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP 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
To learn more this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 And Conditions
- 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 powered site. You can have legal pages 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 the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
For more information, go here:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your website to be legally 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 documentation, 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 Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online and the terms of service and guidelines for third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole set of regulations, many of which you may not be aware of.
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 offer no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
References And Resources
Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
And …
- 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)