One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to break the law.
As the digital realm continues growing at such a rapid pace and the rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you try to stay informed about what’s happening and make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.
Recent 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 need to 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). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The introduction of these new laws affect several online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like PPC advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a number of advertising and online merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site(s) are required to comply with various legalities according to laws that govern businesses online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be advertising on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. 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 Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you may get paid an affiliate commission if visitors purchase it.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund and return policies.
- Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are false and tries to sue you.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult-related content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider now 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 to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk 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 randomly-chosen 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% were breaking 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 entirely 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 a business owner can easily become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
it’s important to make sure that your website or blog remains fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you do business with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information if using their services and product features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your sites with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information products via companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling products via ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
New 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 will easily reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
You can find many business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance
If you plan to develop social networking applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations 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 monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will help you stay out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (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 – This lets users be aware that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to visitors that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets visitors know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
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 these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add links to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can add these to the sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that visitors will be able to access legal information from all your site’s pages …
(Display links to legal information on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar using widgets here:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
More info:
Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates written by legal 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 business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- 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 page on your website for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your server as described previously.
For more details, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, another option is to use plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If manually setting up legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your site.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks when user agrees to your terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your dashboard menu section …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
Choose from a number of pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – 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 using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable compliance templates for your online business …
More info:
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 & Conditions
- 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
More information:
If hiring lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some form of basic legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or advertise online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.
Resources
Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
Additionally …
- 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
We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site.
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