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 consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “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 various online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like PPC advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
More importantly, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website are required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be recommending online, and that there are solutions for WordPress users that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. As stated above, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party companies whose services or products you offer on your website or blog
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you’ll do with it.
- Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their site.
- You did not tell your site users that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you may derive a commission if they buy using your affiliate link.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your return policies.
- Your visitors claim that your testimonials are false and try to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you have received a free copy in your product review.
- Your site publishes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider too these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users 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 provide a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk 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 websites picked at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, 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:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s vitally important to ensure that your online business has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to site visitors.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
All the big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information if using many of their services or features. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your online properties with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information products with companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale in their networks …
(Policy requirements for selling products via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often 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 kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your website complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
A number of online resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See our additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to create apps for your website users, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Legal Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Legally Compliant?
If you suspect that your website is lacking in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into including any of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general information about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets readers be aware that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample Or review Copy – Disclosure that informs readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to visitors that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
- 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult your 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 content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and display clearly to your visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar menu (or the footer of your site) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or going to websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Visit this website to learn more:
Another option is to download a package of cut & paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, 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 site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress Legal Page Plugins
As well as using cut & paste legal templates, you can keep things really simple by using plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress-powered websites and blogs that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:
- Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very 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 – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when the 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 appear in your main navigation menu …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)
Select from various built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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 useful plugin:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs that includes over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your site …
Learn more about the plugin here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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 license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
Go here for more information:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your site to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to 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 are making money online, you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online and the guidelines and terms of service of 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or advertise online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
Additional Resources
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- United States Copyright Office
Plus …
- Google 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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