Do you have a site online? Maybe a blog, or simply a straightforward domain with one or two capture pages and a thankyou page? If this is the case this post may be the most significant thing you’ve read all day!
Most new Internet network marketers do well to get a site online in any way. They work constantly to figure out hosting, FTP programs, HTML editors, CSS stylesheets, and all of the other things one must learn how to publish even a straightforward site on the web. But, the overwhelming majority are forgetting one important piece of the puzzle :
Legal disclaimers!
There are two excellent reasons you (and each Internet-based network marketer you know) ought to have a number of carefully-worded legal disclaimers on your website:
First, it is simply a great idea. The web is a particularly enormous place, and you never can say who’s going to stumble on your internet site. All it takes is one person to get pissed, saying you over-promised and under-delivered ( or one of 1,000,000 other issues ) and you could be up the stream without a paddle.
Could you afford to protect yourself from such a lawsuit? Potentially notin a survey of small business owners, over Eighty percent stated that the mere threat of a court action would be adequate to close them down! It’s much better to avoid that situation completely.
Second, if you want to do some advertising on Google AdWords, you’re going to need certain disclaimers in place to steer clear of being slapped. Without them your quality score will suffer and, at some point soon, Google will stop sending you traffic or perhaps ban your account totally!
Why?
Well, Google only wants valid firms advertising on AdWords. They have ( cleverly ) figured out that most fly by night scammers don’t bother to consult an attorney and publish the mandatory disclaimers on their sites.
Most real enterprises do! A major establishment would never dream about putting a website online without consulting their attorneys and adding a major quantity of details. They understand that the price of not doing so far outweighs what they pay their lawyers to write a few disclaimers!
Therefore this is a rather straightforward way for Google to clear out Eighty percent of the scammers in an automatic way and unless you need to look like a scammer to Google, you’re going to need to address this on your website!
Now you know. If you have got a website of any type for your business ( be it a blog, or just some capture pages ) you really need to have links to your disclaimers clearly visible in the footer. But which disclaimers do you need?
First, allow me to say IANAL I Am Not A Lawyer! I’m a network marketing specialist like you. That said, here are the disclaimers I have on my site ( see the links in the footer ) and why:
- Copyright Notice. This tells visitors of my site that its content is copyrighted, and that I am the copyright holder. It also tells other copyright holders the easiest way to report violation of their rights. Therefore if somebody posts their work as a comment to my site, they know who to contact to have it removed.
- Terms of Service. This covers all sorts of things like not permitting minors to access my site, ensuring that ( if i am sued ) the case will be handled in North Carolina ( so I don’t have to travel to defend myself, ) etc.
- Earnings Disclaimer. No matter how many times I say, Just because I’m a success doesn’t mean you’ll be a success, some individuals do not get it. This explains it in a way the courts will understand.
- Privacy Policy. This tells anyone signing up to my list exactly what I am going to do with the information they provide , as well as the other types of information that could be collected while they’re on my site.
Where do you get these disclaimers? You cannot just copy / paste them without authorization and in case you’re brooding about it, let me remind you that stealing from attorneys ( who can prosecute you for free ) is probably not the brightest idea.
First, the free options. If all you need is a Privacy Policy ( which is much better than nothing, ) there is a free WordPress plugin called Easy Privacy Policy that will give you something to start with. It won’t help you with a Terms of Service, Earnings Disclaimer, or Copyright Notice, though and, as with most things in life, you get what you pay for
For those with a huge budget, the best possible solution is to hire a lawyer who makes a speciality of Internet marketing law and get them to draft the documents for you. After all, they’re the one who’s going to be defending you if you get sued!
Finally, if you have got some cash but don’t want to spend thousands on legal fees, there’s Brian Kindsvater’s Internet marketing Law Center. Brian’s not just a practicing attorney who focuses on Internet marketing, but he’s an internet marketer himself. For a reasonable one off members fee, you will have the right to use the exact Internet network marketer disclaimers I am using on my site on all of your sites for life! Not such a terrible deal, right?