The one thing to remember as you start your first blog and every blog that you add to your growing empire is that you MUST treat this as a business. The world is a scary place and there are people out there who want nothing more than to steal your hard earned money and to cause others suffering for their own gratification. With that In mind there are certain pages you must have on your site to cover yourself legally and to prevent you falling foul of the growing legal requirements for legitimate online businesses.
One thing I must stress however is this is my OPINION, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice then go hire a lawyer. The information below is what I do and I have no control over how you use this information. Ultimately its up to you to protect yourself and your business. So having said that;
Pages.
So what Page or pages must you have in order to be seen as a legitimate online business, in the eyes of the consumer and the eyes of the Authorities. What Page or Pages must you have to gain credibility with Google and the other search engines.
1. Contact Page.
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This is a simple way that people can contact you regarding the content on your site and to report issues that they may find when they visit. This also builds trust with your visitors because they have the means to contact you directly. This does not have to be a sophisticated Page and there is a plugin that makes this easy to do. The plugin is called
2. About Page.
The About Page is so that people who visit your site can learn more about the person behind the blog. You would be surprised just how many people who visit a blog take a look at the About Page. People are interested in other people and who they are, what they do and most will form a very strong positive feeling or a very negative feeling based upon thier own perceptions and capabilities. You About Page should have a photograph (which does not have to be your image but should be a legally obtained copyrighted image) and some blurb about the purpose of the blog and what any visitor is likely to get from your blog.
3. Compensation Disclosure Page
O.K this is getting into the real legal murky waters. In this Disclaimer you are basically going to declare that the results other people have by using techniques or information they obtain from you are likely to be completely different to results you have obtained using the same techniques. You are also going to declare that you may be compensated by third party companies or organisations if a visitor purchases a product you have recommended to them using a link to the sales page from your website.
4. Terms Of Use Page
Your Terms Page is to explain to the potential visitor that there are Terms and Conditions attached to their use of your website. Those terms include the Privacy policy, use of the site by Minors, your Anti-spam policy etc. Perhaps the most important part of this document is the Limits of Liability that you make in the Terms Of Use. you must also make clear to the visitor that if they disagree with any aspect of the Terms Of Use they should not visit your website or use its content.
5. Privacy Policy Page
This is another very important Page. Especially if you collect email addresses etc in any forms because you have a Liability both real and imagined to those who provide that sort of detail. essentially this document is to protect you from potential liability were personal information that is provided to you and for which you must protect from falling into the hands of others less scrupulous than you or your company. You must explain what you do with that information, how you protect it. The use of autoresponders and other solicited email activity should also be covered.
Now I use a professionally developed lawyers online program to generate my legal pages according to the laws of the US because that’s where my major source of traffic (and sales) occurs. They have produced a very simple piece of software that you just fill in the blanks and it produces the HTML pages ready to be uploaded all nicely formatted and spell checked and more importantly legally correct for the market. You can check them out at
