As a website owner, you do not want to find yourself breaking laws, rules or regulations.
Internet laws were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t prevent someone from taking legal action against your business.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, 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 legal ramifications for various business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. contextual ads
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
This article explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and describes inexpensive solutions to help make your site legally compliant.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever you do business.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are selling and could receive an affiliate commission if they buy products through your affiliate link.
- You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Your visitors claim the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of the product you reviewed.
- Your site contains adult information and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider also the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, 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 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 notices 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 becoming exposed to non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You are required to let your visitors know that your website 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 interact with online.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using their products. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue online with your website with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your business via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information-based products through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale in their network …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – 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. A quick search online reveals that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation 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 any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.
You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will 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., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay 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 provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Legal Information Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Compliant?
If your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will help your site stay out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to consider including one or more of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets site users know that you are not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to visitors that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Discloses to visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets users know that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult your 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.
Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in typical web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors can access the information from all your web pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
More information:
Another option is to purchase a set of legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, 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
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (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 WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described earlier.
To learn more, visit this website:
Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use a plugin.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress sites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If the idea of setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your WordPress dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page type menu)
Select from several built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs that contains over twenty customizable legal pages for your web presence …
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 or flip).
More information:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal firm.
We want your website to be legally safe!
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 legal page templates, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with all laws and regulations and any terms of service and guidelines required by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law regarding your specific business.
References And Resources
Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:
- 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 – 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
- United States 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
- Google 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 legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using inexpensive solutions.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now