Tag: WordPress Legal Pages

Is your website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you recommend or use?

Internet laws are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against your business.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines 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.

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

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

• Any form of advertising, including text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

Without certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising and online merchant networks.

You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website(s) may be subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be recommending on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.

Is Your Website Compliant?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you offer

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A user has a heart attack after using your online workout program.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you’ll do with the details you’ve collected.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website letting your site users know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could earn financial benefits if visitors end up purchasing via your affiliate link.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are misleading and tries to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider also the following documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• 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, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a website owner can easily become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence stays legally compliant.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

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

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional 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 online.

For example:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue online with your site using Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been 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 kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your site complies with all FTC guidelines.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide additional 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 laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These

If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with access to your legal pages …

(Apps that integrate with social networks also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services online using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve ever wondered 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 third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Compliance Pages Should You Add To Your Site To Be Covered Against Legal Compliance Issues?

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

Adding the following legal pages to your website should help you keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

Additionally, you may want to look into including any of the following pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general 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 media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs your readers that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to readers that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
• Sample Or review Copy – Disclosure that informs visitors that you have received a sample or review copy of the product you’re writing about by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your readers be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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 Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, 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 using FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

You can then add links to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) so that visitors will be able to access legal information from every web page …

(It’s important to display links to legal information to users on all of your site’s pages)

We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:

• Adding WordPress Widgets To Your Blog

Legal Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted internet forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here for more information:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download a set of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• 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 each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.

More information:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using cut & paste templates, you can simplify things using plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-driven websites worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you time.

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your website.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will be added to your main navigation section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

You have the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …

(WP 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 using this handy plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …

Go here to learn more:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

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 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some form of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal firm.

We want your site 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 ready-made legal documents, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, 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, it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice on this website. 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 the law in your country or region.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:

• 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 – 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

Also …

• 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 this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site using simple and inexpensive methods and solutions.

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