You want to start a blog. Great! Everybody talks about how easy and cost effective it is to start a blog, but not many mention the legal side upfront. And that is probably because when you hear legal you automatically think expensive as hell.
Whenever I hear legal I automatically think how do I protect myself from “expensive as hell”. Are you catching my drift? Don’t hide from it. Let’s hit it head on. It’s only expensive when you don’t act on it early on.
I was able to find a fellow blogger Amira over at A Self Guru that also happens to be a lawyer and she provides all the templates you could ever need. At a very reasonable cost compared to actually having a lawyer draft these up. You can find all of the templates here. She also goes into way more depth (than I ever could) as to why you need legal policies on your website in her article Must have legal pages for Websites and Blogs. What I also love is she has ton of other legal templates and contracts you may need in the future like:
- Sponsored Post
- Guest post
- Freelance
- Earnings and Testimonial Disclaimer (Think Income reports )
More importantly these templates are added on as a bonus when you purchase a legal bundle.
Why is it important to legally protect yourself in the blogging world? Or in any business.
When I owned a handmade soap business, not only did I have an LLC established I also purchased insurance for my business. In addition to this, how my ingredients labels were listed on my product were also a legal aspect.
I had all of this in place before I even went to my first market. I wanted to make sure my personal assets and products were protected before I had my foot in the door.
I always look into the legal side of any business before diving in. How do I protect myself and my business? So starting a blog was nothing different. I immediately looked into the legal side. Here is what I found :
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- Disclaimers
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- Privacy
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- Terms and conditions
Are the 3 legal documents you absolutely need when launching an online website.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure for more information. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and I am not giving you legal advice. I’m simply sharing knowledge and what I do as my own due diligence. I strongly encourage you do your own due diligence.
Disclaimers
Your blog is your opinion and nothing more unless you have some type of certified education in your niche (most of the time this is not the case). You are blogging your own experience, your own results, and what has worked for you. Not, everyone will have the same experience as you if they decide to implement any of your opinionated strategies in their lives.
Let’s say you are a professional in your niche and you are offering advice specific to your niche. This also needs a disclaimer stating that your advice is not legally binding through your blog and an agreement needs to be established through a signed contract and/or fee structure.
Have you ever ran across a course stating that you can make 10,000$ dollars in 30 day, but has a “ *Results May Vary ” at the bottom in fine print. This is a disclaimer. It may be possible to make 10,000$ in 30 days but the results vary from each individual.
You cannot come back and take legal action against them because you didn’t make 10,000$ in 30 days. Because they had a disclaimer in place stating that this is not a guarantee. This is the type of legal protection you need on your website.
This is very important to have on your blog if you plan to use different monetizing strategies or offer specific advice.
Even if you are offering Freebies like Checklist, Printables, Digital Planners, etc. These will also need Disclaimers stating they are for personal use and cannot be redistributed for reselling and/or used as freebies on their own site. Unless otherwise stated as so.
This protects the time that you put in to provide freebies to your online audience.
Privacy
Plan and Simple people have the right to know what their personal information is being used for. If someone gives you their personal information like their email address. What are you doing with it? When someone accesses your website what are their cookies being used for?
Look at the claims that have been bought upon large corporations regarding privacy policies. Facebook for example you are probably a part of the large settlement claim. This just goes to show Privacy policies are very important to have no matter the size of your website.
Terms and Conditions
What rights are they giving up while accessing your website? Who also has access to their information should they decide to click a third party link (affiliate link). Terms and conditions lay all the information out for them. Usually terms and conditions will state that they are agreeing to the above policies by continued use of your site.
These are the 3 legal documents you are required to have on your website. They are there to protect you if any legal matters come into play. Does anybody really read the Policies, probably not. Are they very important, yes they are. Do you need them on your website? Yes, yes you do.
As you get further into blogging there will be other documents and contracts you need especially if you want to offer things like Sponsored posts, your own products and services, freelancing, collaborating with other bloggers, etc.
But for now starting off you only need Privacy, Disclaimer, T&C’s.
Starting a blogging business allows you to join the work from home club, it opens doors for passive income, and it has a low start up cost compared to other businesses. Even with purchasing the required legal documents. What’s even better is the required documents can be added to any website; it doesn’t have to be a blog.
Protecting my assets in the beginning is a step I always take. No matter if I’m doing it for fun or want to make an income from it. It’s definitely something you should consider as well.
As always I would love to hear from you so please comment down below or reach me on the Contact Me Page. Tell me how you are legally protecting your website or if you are considering starting your own blog.
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