Online Marketing Strategies From Online Marketing Expert Nick Smith

I got an email the other day from a good friend and fellow marketer, Bernadette Doyle, who wanted my thoughts on a question she received from one of her subscribers.

It’s one of those questions that’s incredibly important and yet, hardly talked about.

Not only that, but if you get it wrong, you could be leaving yourself open to getting sued.

Here’s the question she got:

Hi Bernadette,

I’m looking at putting terms & conditions together to put on my website prior to my workshops.

Do you have any I could have a look at for reference?

Thank you.

Best Wishes,

Karine

Here’s my reply:

Hey Karine

The one thing you need to remember about legal documents are they are copyrighted just like any other web content, so you can’t just “model” someone else’s as you’re breaching copyright laws.

I personally use a software program called AutoWebLaw to generate many of the legal agreements I need for my online business, including Website Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, etc.

You can get it here: http://www.autoweblaw.com and you can see examples of the legal documents it generates here:

http://www.productlaunchautomator.com

There are a few legal document software programs out there. Be very careful which one you choose to use. If you find something that looks good and it within your budget, make sure you contact the authors to clarify they own the copyright to the generated documents.

A couple of years ago a very famous Internet marketer was using a legal document generator they got off of eBay and it turns out it was ripping off another lawyer’s copyright.

The lawyer just did an exact search on Google for a phrase in one of the docs and found thousands of people including this “guru” who ended up paying the lawyer $3,000 NOT to take him to court.

If AutoWebLaw isn’t in your budget, this website will allow you to use their legal documentation on your website for free, so long as you leave their link at the bottom of the page - which I think is a fair trade:

http://www.website-law.co.uk/documents.html

If you don’t want the link, you can pay a small fee to them to have the rights to remove it. Be advised each of their documents carries a removal fee and you need to pay it for each website you own, so if you have a lot of websites, AutoWebLaw might be a better option if you can’t negotiate a special price.

I’d advise not trying to pull a “fast one” and leave out the link because it’s child’s play for them to find every person that’s using it in Google and compare it to their customer database.

Plus the fact they’re lawyers - not the type of people you want to mess with!

Also, I found a free online generator that will reate a customized Privacy Policy for your website - which is essential if you display Google AdSense on any of your sites as Google recently changed their Terms of Conditions to say all AdSense publishers must have a Privacy Policy on their site, or they reserve the right to disable your account.

http://www.serprank.com/privacy-policy-generator/

I hope you find that useful.

If you know of any other free legal document resources, go ahead and post it below.

Once I have over 10 comments, I’ll add the next blog post.