Are you a website owner or thinking about starting a website? Are you going to blog on that website? Adding affiliate links, or wanting to sell products? Then you need to have legal templates on your site! While there are free legal templates for bloggers, they’re often not comprehensive enough, and not written by a lawyer. However, not having the right kind of legal templates on your website could get you sued. Nobody wants that, of course.
Is your blog legal?
So, the question here is: is your blog legal? Do you have the templates to protect yourself? The difficult thing about blogging is that you can’t really control who is visiting your site from where in the world; nor should you want to. But, Europe, the US, and Canada; all these continents have different rules about privacy. How can you know you abide by all their laws? How to understand all that difficult jargon?
What legal templates would you need?
So, first things first, what kind of legal templates do you definitely need on your blog. There are three most important ones:
First, there’s the privacy policy. This has to do with compliance with the GDPR (Europe), and CCPA (Canada). When people go to your website and fill out their name, email address, or other information, they have the right to know how that information is used. That is what you explain in your privacy policy. A privacy policy is the most important form and is legally required for your site.
Second, there’s the Disclaimer. This is important for the Federal Trade Comission (FTC) if you post any affiliate links on your website. While you might use a disclosure in your blog posts (e.g., this post may contain affiliate links), this is not enough. In the disclaimer, you explain more thoroughly what the purpose is of these affiliate links, and, importantly, that if visitors click these links you have no control over the information gathered by the third party link. Other earnings and income reports are also stated in the Disclaimer.
Third and last, there’s the Terms and Conditions. This gives information on where you’re stationed (e.g., for me, it’s the Netherlands). For instance, if you get into a legal dispute with someone from another country or state, you don’t want to go all the way there to settle it, right? That’s what the Terms and Conditions is for. It also includes issues like intellectual property rights, the right to terminate any contracts of sorts, third party links, and more.
Templates I use to make my blog legal
So, now that you know why having legal protection for your blog is essential, and you know which forms are important, how do you get them? Free templates are not enough, but naturally, you don’t want to spend a full legal fee for hiring a lawyer to draft up these documents.
Luckily, there comes Amira: a lawyer who made these super easy-to-use legal templates. After purchasing, all you have to do is download them, and then everywhere you need to fill in something, it’s highlighted.
Seriously, it’s so easy that even I could understand it, and I don’t get anything about law and do not speak legalese. Does it still cost quite a bit? Yeah, it does. Don’t think all you have to do is pay a few tens of dollars, and then you’re done. But, it doesn’t cost near as much as hiring a lawyer, nor does it cost as much as a law-suit. Consider it a wise and necessary investment for your blog and for yourself.
The link will lead you to the website, with the different forms, and prices. You will see these forms are perfect for you. I have no doubt about it.
