Is your website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you advertise or recommend?
Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The new laws has legal implications for various online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like contextual ads
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into various advertising or online merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website or blog are required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be recommending on your website, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress that can help your sites become compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you advertise
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online workout program.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an adverse reaction.
- You’ve informed your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making visitors aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are endorsing and could earn a sales commission if they end up purchasing through your link.
- You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are fake and decides to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you have received a free copy of a product you reviewed.
- Your site contains adult-related content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider also these real 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 an offer they were promoting. 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 children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 with warnings 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 you could be exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You are expected to let your site visitors know that your business complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with online.
For example:
Google requires websites to display certain information if using their products and features. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your site with Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your business via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages before your products are approved for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, 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 chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.
There are many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the additional references and 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 Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to create social networking applications for your site users, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to 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 plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- 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 business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies)
What Legal Pages Should I Add To My Website To Be Compliant?
If your web site is falling short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will help your business stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- 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 provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets users know that you are not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through an affiliate link.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets users know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product you’re writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets your 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) so that visitors can access the information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar and footer using widgets here:
Using Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
For more information, go here:
Another option is to download a package of cut and paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- 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 page for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described previously.
For more details, go here:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using templates, you can simplify things using a plugin.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites and blogs you may be interested in using:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you many headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your main WP dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
Choose from various pre-configured 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
To learn more this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over twenty customizable compliance templates for your web presence …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.
To learn more, go here:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your business to be protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with government legal requirements and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website or blog must comply with various 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to 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.
Legal Information
Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to comply and meet legal obligations:
- 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 – 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 …
- 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum