One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
Online laws and regulations were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against your business.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
These laws affect several online business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, including Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
More importantly, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website or blog(s) are subject to certain legal requirements according to laws that govern businesses online, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be offering online, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your online properties become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Is Your Website Compliant?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot 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 certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you advertise
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of these scenarios were to happen:
- A user suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people allergic reactions.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you plan to do with their details.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website making your site visitors aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing and may earn a commission if they decide to purchase through your link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims that your testimonials are false and decides to sue you.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider also the real examples of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to give everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- 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 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had breached 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 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 whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being exposed to litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
it’s important to ensure that your digital presence is fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services
All the leading websites and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You are obligated to let your site users know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you engage with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your blog using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
And even promoting your business via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information products with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your site before your products are approved for selling via their networks …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, 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 type of money-making activity 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 ensuring that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
There are many resources online that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to resources at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to create 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 your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- 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 you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk 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 litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Basic Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general financial content)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs visitors that you are not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you will derive some form of financial or similar form of benefit if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample Or review Copy – Disclosure that informs your readers that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors 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.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory in your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that users have access to legal information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this tutorial:
Using Ready-Made Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
More info:
Another option is to purchase a set of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – 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 add your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as previously described.
More info:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using legal templates, another option is to use plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-powered sites worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If manually creating legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be 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 WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to your 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 appear in your main dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
With WPLegal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)
You can also choose from several pre-written 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
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit this site:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
Learn We have written an in-depth article about this plugin here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 Service
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro 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 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 the plugin on all of your sites.
More information:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is 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 legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, 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 (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service of 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.
Legal Information
Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet its 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
- United States Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog.
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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)