If you plan to grow a successful business online, you do not want to suddenly discover that you have been operating on the wrong side of the law.
As the digital realm continues growing at such a fast pace and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the US-based BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The introduction of new laws has legal consequences for several online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising and online marketing networks.
More importantly, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website or blog(s) are required to comply with certain legalities, the importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be offering on your website, and that there are solutions that can help your online properties become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations governing your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose products or services you advertise on your website or blog
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for one moment what could happen to your business if the following incidents were to occur:
- A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you plan to do with the information you have collected.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are promoting that you may derive financial benefits if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- A visitor claims that your testimonials are misleading and decides to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you received a free copy of the product you are reviewing.
- Your site includes adult information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider now these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s vitally important to make sure that your website stays legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will engage with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their products and features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue online with your WordPress site with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
Or promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by making sure that your website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
A number of sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources to some of these at the end of this article …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to create apps that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to consider adding any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the correct type of disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets site users know that you’re not receiving any type of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Informs users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs readers that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
- 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 Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers 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 these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add these to your sidebar (or the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors have access to legal information from all your pages …
(Display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets here:
Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More info:
Another option is to purchase a package of legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & 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 described previously.
Go here for more details:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things using plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-powered sites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item is added to your dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)
With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, medical sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
You can also select from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – 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
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 & 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).
More information:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your website to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary 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 are making money online, it’s important that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and the guidelines and terms of service for third-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising 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, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Information
Below is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site 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
- Better Business Bureau Website
- 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
Additionally …
- 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress 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)