One of the worst things that can happen to you as a business owner is to break the law.
Internet laws 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 prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws has ramifications for several business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, including Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in most advertising or online marketing networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your site may be required to comply with various legalities according to laws that govern online businesses, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be offering on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become more compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. As stated above, 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 that govern business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you endorse
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Are you at risk? Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A user suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you plan to do with the details you have collected.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their website.
- There is no statement on your website informing your visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you are selling and could earn a sales commission if visitors purchase it.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your return policies.
- A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false and decides 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-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider too the real case studies of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped 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 marketers took a risk 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% had infringed 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% were in violation 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 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 risk being exposed to litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords User
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog remains fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services
Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You are required to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you engage with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their services. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
Or promoting your site through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell products online with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see 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 plan to do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop apps that integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networks also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your website is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following legal pages to your site will help keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides information about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right type of disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you will not receive for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to your readers that you may derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets site users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs site users that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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.
Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers 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 creating a legal folder on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or the footer section of your site) so that visitors have access to legal information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Use Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
Go here for more information:
Another option is to purchase a package of legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
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 server as previously described.
For more information, go here:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using copy & paste templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress users that you may be interested in using:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If manually setting up legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress 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 website much easier and save you time.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page 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 around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear in your navigation section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view legal pages from the 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, review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Type of Site menu)
Select from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable legal page templates for your site …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
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 – 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 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).
More information:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then at least consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your site 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 attorney-prepared legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with all government regulations and the terms of service and guidelines required by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. Your website must comply with a whole range of regulations, some 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.
Resources
Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to comply and meet its legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Better Business Bureau
- 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
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
- AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
- ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
- Facebook Platform Policies
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided 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)