Figure Out How To Protect Your Blog Legally
In this world of growing technology and online businesses, everyone is running at a very fast speed without properly thinking about their businesses.
A number of online businesses include blogging websites, e-commerce store and many more.
Connecting with the world can be rather intruding if the other party finds it a nuisance
In the passion for running our online blogging website rapidly, we are more focused on how will we increase our traffic?
Engaging through the social to make connections but in between that people ignore the most significant step is the Legal Section of the blog.
Therefore, today we are going to make you realize the importance of it and why is it the first thing you need to figure out before launching your website.
We will walk through all the legal pages that you must include in your website.
If you are a blogger or an entrepreneur, usually most of the people in these fields don’t care about the legal authorization of their sites or blogs.
And most of us give up trying to understand what actually it is.
Finding an authentic source to apply the law to your content is difficult as the internet is full of flaws and frauds. People don’t give it attention and unknowingly get in trouble.
This article is all about the necessary blogging rules and laws that one must keep in mind, thus these cannot be neglected.
Why do bloggers need to protect their blog legally?
What most bloggers don’t know is that they should always include the legal pages on their website but the bigger question is:
Do they even know what are legal pages or their importance?
The answer is No.
Therefore, it is said what you don’t know, can get you hurt in the long run.
But in today’s world, it has become very crucial to protect yourself legally otherwise you get sued or get into real trouble.
You will have lawsuits over lawsuits and will not be able to get out of it.
For instance, when you ask your subscribers to fill in their personal information such as:
a. Name
b. Email Address
c. Contact number
You are ensuring that their personal information is in safe hands and for that, you require Privacy Policy on your site.
I have met many new bloggers who got themselves in trouble because of getting caught in plagiarism or nonetheless just random things they did, not taking this into mind that it could be illegal or might just not be the right thing to do.
Speaking of which, I came across a struggling new blogger who got herself in some serious trouble because she started without any knows and hows of the blogging world, what’s necessary and what’s not.
She recently started a photography blog, for which she intended to relate to a few already successfully running blogs run by known bloggers for the work they produce.
While making her website, she copied and pasted their work to her profile for a run check but forgot to remove a few particular posts and content and published her website!
Did you see what went wrong?
She didn’t legally copy that content neither did she had any legal bundles on her blog for the safe side.
She had to face a lot of hurdles that came her way including people bashing her, canceling their work with her and so more.
That is why it is very important to protect yourself legally and include legal pages on your website.
What are the legal pages?
Legal pages are the conditions and statements that protect you from the law.
Legal pages include a privacy policy, disclaimer, and terms and conditions.
Legal pages are the most important pages of your website that you need to include before making your website live.
Getting your work stolen, or people using your work without your consent and getting all the benefits in one of the biggest fears of any entrepreneur or a blogger.
Legal pages are the reason, bloggers are confident in the work they produce.
As nobody can claim their work on any basis.
Let’s discuss each of these in detail to understand these more.
Things Bloggers Need To Avoid When Making Legal Pages
Now that you have a proper understanding of what are legal pages and their importance.
You will definitely want to include these on your website but there are some mistakes that most of the bloggers make that you need to avoid.
Never Copy Someone Else Legal Pages
The first rule of online business is to never copy someone else work and especially legal pages because you will have a copyright accusation.
If you are not financially stable to hire a lawyer, you can always use the templates available online.
Never Write Legal Pages
If you are not a lawyer then you shouldn’t attempt to write legal pages because you don’t have any knowledge related to legal terms and how it would protect you from any lawsuit.
3 Legal Pages That Bloggers Need to Include In Their Blogs
- Privacy Policy
- Disclaimer
- Terms & Conditions
1. Privacy Policy for blog
What is Privacy Policy for Blogs?
The privacy policy is a legal statement that informs your customers or readers how you use their information.
This information should be disclosed to the users by law.
In other words, if a customer is interacting with you, they have to know this by law, if they use your work or information elsewhere, without you knowing or getting your permission or consent on a particular thing.
The blogger i.e. You have all the right to sue them for any mishap or plagiarism that occurred.
Legal Bundles For You
As your privacy is the first most priority, For that here are some related trustworthy legal bundles:
Legal Bundles by Amira, who’s a blogger and a lawyer by profession BUT she is NOT YOUR lawyer.
She provides amazing packages for your website which includes bonuses.
WHAT IS INCLUDED IN LEGAL BUNDLE?
This includes a privacy policy template (required by law) + 3 bonuses! GDPR compliant.
Why Do Bloggers Need Privacy Policy?
Creating a privacy policy for the blog is very important because the users that are visiting your website have the right to know how you are using that information.
As the information is personal and confidential it is mandatory to include it in the privacy policy which includes email collection and so on.
Yet again, using the privacy policy or adding it to your blog is kind of mandatory for your own good.
In order to keep the work in safe hands, that you did in that precious time.
Moreover, The privacy policy should also include how you use the information that is automatically being collected through Google Analytics and cookies.
You also need to show your compliance with the CAN-SPAM act.
2. Disclaimer
What Is Disclaimer?
The disclaimer is a way to disclaim or deny legal liability for the content you write on your website. It informs your users that the information displayed on the website is as is it and does not constitute any type or kind of advice.
Lawyer approved Disclaimer Template including all the affiliate disclosures you need on your website + 3 bonuses!
You have a general disclaimer on your website but for some reason, you don’t have one then you should have at least a disclaimer related to the work you are doing like health, finance and many more.
A disclaimer should include the following
- Earning Disclaimer
- Denying responsibility for the third party links
- Revealing your affiliate relationship under the FTC
- Sponsored disclaimer
- Testimonials Disclaimer
- Product reviews disclaimer
- And much more
Earning Disclaimer:
The disclaimer provides your users with certain apps and strategies or programs that helps them to earn money. This states that the income is not promised i.e. not guaranteed and the user must have the knows and hows – the requisite knowledge.
Sponsored Disclaimer:
Your website may contain some sponsored posts or ads. You give access or allow a third party to sponsor or advertise their posts. For which you need certain terms and conditions.
In order to protect the contracts of your sponsored products and posts, here’s your easy collaborative agreement to build a long-lasting relationship.
Testimonial Disclaimer:
The testimonials appearing on your site, are the ones that you receive in any form, whether audio, video or text. These are the real-life reviews of people who chose to use your products in any way and share their experience.
Thus you share their words on the public site for which particular consents are required.
With this NDA, you protect your work information states to be confidential and a secret between you and your clients before disclosing and entering into partnerships, joint ventures, and other collaborations.
These are the most common and must required disclaimers you must add to display on your blog in order to make it look legal.
3. Terms And Conditions
What Is It?
Term and Condition are also known as Terms of Use or Terms of Service. You can think of it as the rule book of your website that includes all the rules related to your website such as what you allow or don’t allow your users.
Terms and Conditions include
- You need to specify the lawful use of your website.
- You need to specify the rights that you publish on your website.
- You also need to specify the age that is legally eligible to access your content.
- How and where you will resolve your legal disputes.
Lawyer approved Terms and Conditions (A/K/A Terms of Service or Terms of Use) for your website + 3 bonuses!
Why Do Bloggers Need It?
This is very important that you include a disclaimer on your website in order to get protection from lawsuits. As anybody can claim that the content you published on the website has some material related to legal advice.
Under certain circumstances or usually, in most of the states, it is required to publish your legal disclaimers or policies in order to avoid any future mishaps that might take place, without involving law any further.
Furthermore, under the Federal Trade Commission(FTC), you are also required to display or disclose your affiliate relationships, the third party links you publish on your website and all the financial rewards or commission you receive from it.
What is the CAN-SPAM act?
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing of 2003 act, that was introduced back then by the President of the United States.
Aside from this, according to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you are required to inform the users about certain rights they are entitled to such as the right to delete their data or personal information.
Just in case, you get a new subscriber, but they keep getting spam emails. It’s their right to have the option to unsubscribe from the blog or something else that doesn’t interest them.
Every online business or blogging website should have a privacy policy because many state and federal law does require it.
In order to save your blog from any mishaps, you must legally protect it using the law, i.e legal bundles that are available online by the lawyers.
Can you add images to your blog?
NO. you cannot just add any images on your profile.
You must have certain permissions and allowance to add someone’s image.
1. you must have a link to the owner
2. Buy royalty-free images i.e when you buy these, you don’t have to worry about the copyright.
3. Use Creative common images
4. Ask for permission
For these legal acts, you must have a lawyer approved agreement or a contract on your blog to avoid any future circumstances that might occur.
In that case, here’s your lead to the legal bundle in this situation.
When we above talked about using the reviews or testimonials of your customers, you need a lawyer approved media release statement, in order to use anyone’s name, image or video and other content legally.
Copyright Law:
Copyright law states that the owner has an exclusive right to all of his content and stuff that’s available on the blog.
It is an act given by the law to the owner with some specifications and limits.
If we talk about copyright law in terms of blogging, then know that it’s quite vast and gives out a lot of information, that must be acknowledged.
Getting the copyright of your work is quite easy and it must be done, in order to make sure that the work that you created is protected.
What should I do when someone steals my content?
If something’s on the internet, it’s most likely to get copied, but people not knowing the fact that it is considered as a crime.
Everything on the internet whether it be your text, video, audio or images, everything is protected under law.
If you want to protect your work, you should simply send them an email and let them know that what they are doing is called copyright infringement.
To make it obvious you must be adding these legal bundles in that case.
Why Do Bloggers Need Legal bundle?
Including Terms and Conditions in your website can protect you from a lot of lawsuits but people don’t realize it and when they are sued it is very late.
The main purpose of terms and conditions is to provide protection from risks and legal liabilities down the road. Aside from this, it also informs your users about the right they have to access certain things.
Is Deep Linking Legal?
With this, we can talk about all your clients and customers that you deal with. You must have some legal certain acts on which you should stay.
Here are your guide and legal bundle to the contract when you are starting a new business with another client:
If you are a blogger, freelancer or entrepreneur and looking for hiring a client to do some work for you, then here’s the lawyer approved contract.
And When you start a new business set up, you need a lawyer approved contract to outline your membership duties when you register for your LLC.
Business needs:
Lawyer approved contract for your affiliate program. This is an agreement you NEED with your affiliates before they promote your products and services.
A complete Blog Audit:
To get the most comprehensive audit for your blog where you will go over everything – complete review of your website, your legal pages, blog setup, design, blog posts, user experience, and discuss ways to increase your blogging income quickly.
You will also receive a 30 minutes phone call to discuss your blog audit results + free access to my best selling Legal Bundle (total value $1600)
In a nutshell, every blogger should have the legal pages on your website if they want to be protected by the law.
It is very crucial to include each and every legal page for your own safety because once you are down that road it is pretty hard to come back from it.
Therefore, precaution is always better than cure.
Even if you don’t have a lawyer, you can always switch to the template available online.
Now that you are completely educated on the legal stuff on your website. To protect your website and get these legal pages in the very instance.
7 comments
Izzy Matias
It is so important to protect one’s blog legally. I also use Amira’s legal templates and are so thankful they protect my blog.
Amy Kent
So very helpful! I need to make some changes on my pages!
Elizabeth Elkassih
Thanks for sharing all this great information. Loved all the thorough content provided.
Monica
Thank you! I bought another legal bundle but I’m considering hiring a lawyer to review everything and make sure I am compliant.
Nadia Malik
Amira has done a good job with these legal templates and it definitely makes it so much easier to have them on your site.
Kimberlie
Thank you for the tips on how to ensure the legality of my blog. I’ll be pinning and creating a checklist.
Sydney
SO helpful!!!! I saved this to Pinterest because I need to make some legal pages on my blog!!