Making Your Blog Legal
Are you blogging legally? If you’re a beginner blogger, it may come as a surprise to you just how many legalities go along with operating a blog. Do you have a Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, and Disclaimers posted on your site? Are you complying with the GDPR and CCPA laws? It can all get overwhelming pretty quickly! But today I’m going to hook you up with a free legal course for bloggers to help you figure it all out.
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 blogs. For legal advice specific to your blog, website, or business, please consult a lawyer such as Lucrezia Iapichino.
UPDATE! For Black Friday week, save 40% on any legal course or template in the Blogging For New Bloggers School!! Use code: BLACKFRIDAYWEEK
Setting Up My Blog’s Legal Pages
When it comes to blogging legally, it’s easy to feel confused and overwhelmed. I know I did!
I knew I needed legal pages on my blog.
But I didn’t have a lot of money to invest and read some bad information online offering free legal templates. I simply copied and pasted a generic privacy policy onto a new page on my blog and called it a day.
Deep down I knew it was too easy to be the right thing to do and they likely weren’t 100% legal. I had taken the easy way out. So I planned to spend more time/money on it later but really wanted to focus on content right away.
As time went on I realized using a free policy was a BIG no-no! But I still put off doing it properly. I put it in the back of my mind and kind of forgot about it.
Fast forward over a year. I start hearing about a new law. The CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). I looked into it a little and discovered a large portion of my traffic comes from California and this new law likely applied to my blog.
Related Reading: Is Your Blog Legally Compliant With The CCPA Law?
Luckily I discovered an opportunity to take a CCPA course by blogger/lawyer Lucrezia Iapichino. Awesome! I signed up. I took the course.
I started to panic.
Quickly, I realized just how bad my free legal templates were. I decided I had to get it right the second time around. I bit the bullet and spent the money on the Legal Bundle Lucrezia was offering. This is seriously what got my site fully legal, quickly, and easily.
With the Legal Bundle 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 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
Does Your Blog Need ALL These Legal Pages?
Honestly, I’m not sure.
It all depends on what you do with your blog, where your traffic comes from, if you collect personal information if you are a member of certain affiliate programs, etc.
Chances are that you need at least SOME, if not most of the pages and policies listed above. If you’re required to comply and you don’t, you could expose yourself and your blog to the risk of fines and lawsuits.
If you have no idea what you need or where to start, I highly recommend Lucrezia’s free legal course for bloggers, Legally Blogs.
This course will teach you how to protect your blog legally and how to meet all the legal requirements. Once you are done with the free course you are given a 15% off coupon code in case you want to take any other legal courses or need to get any of the legal templates.
The Legally Blogs course is broken down into sections:
-Why you need to take care of the legal side of your blog
-Different business types (and how different laws affect each type)
-How bloggers can legally protect themselves
-Various types of legal pages
-GDPR law
-CCPA law
-Taxes and Bookkeeping
Final Thoughts on Blogging Legally
Making sure your blog is meeting legal requirements can feel really inconvenient and confusing. But it is necessary.
Don’t let the overwhelm take over and force you to have regrets later. Why risk it?
If you’re unsure if you’ve done these things properly, I highly recommend you check out this legal course. It’s free so what have you got to lose?
Even if you need to purchase one of the more advanced courses down the road it’s MUCH more affordable than hiring a lawyer on your own to figure out how to make your blog or website legal.
Avoid possible fines down the road. Grab your free legal course for bloggers HERE and get that blog legally compliant! I speak from personal experience, the peace of mind is SO worth it 🙂
Related Reading:
The Easy Way to Make Your Blog Legal
How to Meet ADA Blog & Website Compliance
Does My Blog or Website Need a Privacy Policy?
Is your blog legally compliant with the CCPA Law?
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Free Course to Ensure You’re Blogging Legally
Blogging Resources I love and recommend:
SiteGround – I use SiteGround as my web hosting platform and I love it. They are trusted by the owners of over 1,900,000 domains! It’s secure, fast, reliable, and the customer service is AMAZING! I’ve contacted them for help for a few reasons and received outstanding support. Learn more about SiteGround HERE.
Sendowl – I use Sendowl to sell my own digital products. Sendowl acts as the middle man between buyer and seller. They deliver your product and handle the payments for you. If you’ve got an eBook, printable, or service to sell, Sendowl makes it really easy and affordable. Learn more about Sendowl HERE.
ShareASale – If you are interested in monetizing your blog through affiliate marketing, ShareASale has got to be one of the easiest ways to do it! They’ve got merchants for every niche looking for affiliates to promote their products. Learn more about ShareASale HERE.
Grammarly – I saw a huge improvement in my writing after installing Grammarly. It’s the World’s leading checker of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and plagiarism. The better your writing, the more credible you will seem to you readers. Did I mention they have a FREE version? Check it out HERE.
Very Helpful legal tips for bloggers
Legal pages are SO IMPORTANT! I put off starting my blog seriously for a year because I didn’t know how I was going to get them for my blog so I recommend bloggers start with a resource like this to help them get their blog squared away legally.
Thanks Heather! Making sure your blog is legally compliant can seem like such a daunting task. Good for you for holding off until you got it all in place!
This is such crucial information to know, and you did a great job of writing it all out! You made it so easy to read and understand. I really appreciate it, and thank you for sharing!
I’m so glad you found it easy to follow. Legal blogging tips can be confusing so I’m happy to hear you thought it was straight forward 🙂 Thanks for the comment!