How to Easily Make Your Blog Legal

 

Making your blog legally compliant – the easy way!

What do I need to do to make my blog legal? It’s a question that’s asked constantly in the blogging community. Ensuring your blog or website is operating legally is an important aspect of running your online business. In this post, I’ll explain how I made my blog legally compliant, without hiring a lawyer or spending a small fortune.

 

This post contains affiliate links. This means if you make a purchase through one of these links, I may receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you. All opinions are my own. Read my full disclosure here.

 

Let me start by saying, this post is simply legal information and does not qualify as legal advice. I am not a lawyer. This post is to inform my readers about certain laws that may affect their blog and share my personal experiences. For legal advice specific to your blog, website, or business, please consult a lawyer such as Lucrezia Iapichino.

 

What Legal Pages Does a Blog Need?

Did you know that you need a minimum of 4 legal documents on your site in order to make it legal?

It’s true. According to FTC (Federal Trade Commission) guidelines, you must have the following pages on your blog or website to operate within the law:

– Privacy Policy
– Disclosures
– Terms & Conditions
– Disclaimers

This is the tip of the iceberg, really.

Depending on what services you offer and where your traffic comes from, you may need additional legal documents to be accessible to your readers as well.

Some other laws to consider include:

– GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
– CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) – Please note: This law isn’t specific to California residents but can impact anyone with traffic coming from California.
– PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act)
– COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) 

 

 

Can I Write My Legal Pages Myself?

Technically, you can. But I wouldn’t suggest it. Unless of course, you have a legal background or hours (more like days) to research how to do it properly.

This isn’t something you want to do wrong.

If you create inaccurate legal pages you leave yourself open to many implications with the law. Not to mention, homemade policies will likely make you look really unprofessional.

Neither of these are things you want for your business and all your hard work.

P.S. To learn more about blogging legally, check out:
Legally Blogs Free Legal Course

 

 

Can’t I Just Use a Free Template or Copy Someone?

This is such a bad idea.

Guess who’s guilty of doing this? Me!

In my early days of blogging, I knew I needed a few legal pages on my blog. But I was cheap and didn’t want to spend the money to do it right.

So I simply used a free template I found through Google, changed the date, added my blog name and the website generated a privacy policy for me to copy and paste onto my site.

Now that I know what I’m doing I realize this is really sketchy and definitely not a legally binding contract. The more I learned the more I knew I needed to fix it.

The same can be said for simply copying another blogger’s policy pages.

Depending on what they blog about, where they operate, where their traffic comes from, and what services they offer, their policy could cover completely different things than yours needs to.

This is very risky and the chances of it being accurate to your site are slim.

Not to mention, this is just a rude, unethical thing to do to someone who likely paid good money to get their site legal.

Just, don’t do it.

 

 

How to Make Your Blog Fully Legal, Fast!

At this point, I hope I’ve convinced you the legal end of blogging is a necessary evil. Well, not evil…just a little overwhelming and confusing.

Eventually, I wised up and took action to fix my crummy policy pages. Hanging out in various blogging Facebook groups, I kept hearing about Lucrezia Iapichino’s legal courses and templates.

Clearly this whole blogging legally thing is a common pain point.

So many other bloggers had used these templates with great success so I went to work. I started with the CCPA course and went on to purchase the Legal Bundle Value Pack.

Annnnd I should have done it way sooner!

With the value pack I got:

-Privacy Policy Template
-Cookie Policy Template & recommended Cookie Plugin
-Terms & Conditions Template
-Disclaimer/Disclosure Template
-Affiliate Disclaimer Template
(These templates make things amazingly fast and simple!)

Also:
-Requirements to make your blog CCPA Compliant
-Privacy Policy Requirements under the GDPR
-FTC guidelines and other requirements
-Requirements for the Amazon Affiliate Program

The course explains things very simply with step-by-step instructions. Lucrezia guides you through the process of understanding why each page is necessary, how to fill out the templates, and where to place them on your site.

It truly made dealing with the legalities of blogging quick and straightforward. Well, as straightforward as legal jargon can be!

 

Bonuses

Included with the course are several bonuses. The best may be the coupon code that gives you 25% off on any other legal courses or templates you may need.

There is also access to that helpful Facebook group and an opportunity to become an affiliate.

Related Reading: The Best Facebook Groups to Grow Your Blog

The other thing to note is that once you purchase these templates, you have them to use as many times as you want/need. If you start another blog or website in the future, you’ll already have access to the courses and the templates.

Also, Lucrezia updates the courses as needed if the laws change. So they’ll always be accurate.

 

 

Final Thoughts on Making Your Blog Legal

Ensuring your blog is meeting all the necessary legal requirements can feel really inconvenient and confusing. I get it.

Don’t let the overwhelm take over and force you to have regrets later. Not only are these things needed to be legally compliant, but other bloggers or companies will also be less likely to work with you if you don’t have these pages in place.

Some affiliate programs may reject you without them.

Doing things right makes you and your business look professional and trustworthy.

The price to do things right is incredibly reasonable for what you get. MUCH more so than hiring a lawyer to figure out how to make your blog or website legal.

It’s a small investment to pay to avoid possible fines down the road. Check out the bundle HERE and get that blog legal!

I speak from personal experience, the peace of mind is well worth it 🙂

 

Related Reading:
Does My Blog Need a Privacy Policy?
Is your blog legally compliant with the CCPA Law?
How to Meet ADA Blog & Website Compliance
Free Legal Course for Bloggers

 

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The Easy Way to Make Your Blog Legal

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