If you plan to grow a successful business online, the last thing you want is to find out that you have broken laws, rules or regulations.
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you try to stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, 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.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
The new laws has consequences for several business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (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 or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in various 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(s) are required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be endorsing online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your sites become compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. As stated above, this article is designed only to help 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 and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you promote on your website or blog
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you will do with it.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website making your visitors aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you may get paid a commission if they buy it.
- You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Your visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are false and try to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider also these documented examples 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 details to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. 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 independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how a business owner can easily become exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence remains fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you engage with.
For example:
Google requires you to display legal information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your online properties with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your site using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell products online via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for selling via their network …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of money-making activity 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 by making sure that your website complies with FTC guidelines.
There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide links to resources to some of these at the end of this article …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to create social networking applications for your site users, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- 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 services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve 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 third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
What Legal Pages Does My Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into including any of the following pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general financial information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the correct type of disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you will not receive for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies readers that you will be compensated if they buy through an affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets your readers be aware that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult a 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 content for you in HTML format, 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 HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can add these to your sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from all your pages …
(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
For more details, go here:
Another option is to purchase a package of website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC guidelines brought 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 page on your website for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.
Go here to learn more:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using templates, you can keep things very simple using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)
If manually setting up legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- 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 other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your navigation area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)
Select from a number of pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress 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
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …
Learn more 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 – 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 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).
Visit this website to learn more:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some form of legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your website to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal content, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
***
As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of third-party products and services that you may be promoting or offering online. Your website must comply with various laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Resources
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain 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
- 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
- US Copyright Office
Additionally …
- 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
- 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 essential legal pages to your WordPress website using inexpensive solutions.
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum