Tag: WordPress Legal Pages

If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Online laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of 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 the law will not prevent 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 website for commercial gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also known as 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)

These laws affect several business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, e.g. PPC advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could reject web applications, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising and online merchant networks.

If you are not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website(s) may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern your business, the importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be using on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the tools listed further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. As stated previously, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you recommend on your website or blog

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider what would happen to your business if these scenarios were to happen:

• A user has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives people an adverse reaction.
• You’ve told subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing that you may receive a sales commission if visitors buy it via your affiliate link.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are fake and decides to sue you as a result.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
• Your site contains adult-related information and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider now these actual case studies 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 substantial $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — 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 details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 be exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

It’s vitally important to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and clearly accessible to your site users.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services

All the leading companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.

You must let your visitors know that your website complies will all 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 online.

Here are just some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your blog using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

Or promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell products online using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still 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 website owners 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. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC regulations.

Various sites provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources at the end of this article …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

If you are planning to develop social networking applications that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with access to various legal pages …

(Apps that interface with social networks also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use 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 to avoid 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 websites require you to comply with their policies)

What Compliance Pages Does My Website Need To Be Compliant?

If you suspect that your web site falls short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

• About Us Page
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these legal pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides money-making information)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Lets your visitors know that you will not receive for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you will be compensated if they buy through your affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets readers be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 Site

Ideally, you will consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages using FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users have access to legal information from every web page …

(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Use Widgets In WordPress

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download a package of legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• 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 WordPress page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.

For more information, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.

Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When a user agrees to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will display inside your WordPress dashboard menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

You can also choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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 WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 & 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 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.

We want your website to be legally safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily 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 stated earlier, if you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with all government regulations and any terms of service and guidelines of 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or recommending 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice on our website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements regarding your specific business.

Additional Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to comply 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
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB
• 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

Plus …

• Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and cost-effective resources and WordPress plugins.

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