Is your website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you use or promote?
Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau)
These laws affect several business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote most advertising and online merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website may be required to comply with certain legalities, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be recommending online, and that there are solutions that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. As previously stated, 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 governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you endorse
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to take place:
- Someone has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you will do with it.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their site.
- There is no statement on your site making visitors aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you may earn a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are fake and decides to sue you because of it.
- You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy in your product review.
- Your website publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider also the following real case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- 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 using software that scrapes UIDs. Many 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 websites picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two 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 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 targeted for litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies
Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you do business with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display legal information when using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your websites with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
Or promoting your site via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell products online with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially if you plan to sell products online using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website 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. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
You can find many business resource sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide references to some of these at the end of this article …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to create apps that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with information about various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networks also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you are 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 are considering promoting anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website
If you suspect that your website falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider implementing any of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms (if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets users know that you’re not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets readers be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to readers that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from every web page …
(Display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets here:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-prepared website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
For more information, go here:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut and paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (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 on your website for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described previously.
Go here for more details:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use a plugin.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs you should check out:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you many headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when the user agrees to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche websites, medical sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type drop down menu)
You can also choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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:
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance pages for your website …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
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 – 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 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 or flip).
More info:
If using the services of legal experts to create your 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 professional assistance.
We want your business to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal templates, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website complies with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines required by 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or advertise online. Your website or blog must comply with various laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not be aware of.
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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.
References And Legal Resources
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- US Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site using inexpensive methods and solutions.
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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)