If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.
Online laws are 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 the law won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws has legal consequences for various business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could reject web applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of advertising and online merchant networks.
If you are not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be selling on your site, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As stated previously, the aim of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you recommend on your website
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A user suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you will do with the information you’ve collected.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own site.
- There is no statement on your site making your visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are marketing that you will earn an affiliate commission if they purchase using your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult-related content and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider also the actual examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- 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 copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
It’s vitally important to make sure that your website stays legally compliant.
Complying With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will interact with.
For example:
Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their services and features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your WordPress sites with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages before your products are approved for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
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 documented on their website, this often 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 plan to 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site complies with FTC guidelines.
There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to create apps that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads 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 terminated.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Essential Legal Pages To Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your website lacks in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider implementing any of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides health or medical information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs site users that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you will receive compensation if they buy through an affiliate link.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets readers know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets readers know that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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 Website
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add links to these pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that users have access to legal information from every page …
(Display legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar or footer, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
To learn more, go here:
Another option is to download a set of cut and paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms 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
- 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 each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.
For more details, go here:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, you can keep things very simple by using a plugin.
Here are some great legal WordPress plugins you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. When a user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your main WP dashboard menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)
With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)
Select from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress 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
Go here for more details about the benefits of using this plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your digital business …
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 Plugin – 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 this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
More info:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your site to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documents, or a plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your internet presence must comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not 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, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your specific business.
Legal Resources & References
Here is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC 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 – 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
Also …
- 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
- 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com