Blogging legally – The best legal templates for bloggers

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So let’s be honest, the legal side of blogging, and knowing whether you are blogging legally, can be a minefield! Especially if you are a new blogger.

You probably haven’t thought much about whether you are blogging legally or not and if you have researched it, all that legal jargon is enough to put your head in a spin and have you slamming your laptop shut faster than you can say “GDPR”. Am I right?! 

No need to fret, I’ve got you covered.

I’ve got a hack that’s going to save you a ton of time and stress. Of course, I’m talking about legal templates for bloggers!

In today’s post on blogging legally, we’re going to dive into:

• The importance of blogging legally, 
• Blogging rules and regulations that you need to be aware of
• The must-have legal pages for your blog 
• AND I’ll be showing you how to get legal templates for bloggers that have been written up by actual lawyers. – I’ve even created a free legal resources checklist that you can grab to make sure that you have everything covered!

This post is packed full of info that you are going to want to refer back to so I suggest you take a moment now to bookmark it or pin it for later. Don’t worry, I’ll wait 😉

If you enjoy this post, please subscribe to Travelacrosstheborderline by email, leave a comment below, and share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Thanks for visiting!

Why you should care about blogging legally 

Before we get started on how to blog legally let’s first talk about WHY you need to. 

There are 5 main reasons why you should ensure that your blog is legal:

1. To look professional 
2. To avoid lawsuits, 
3. To avoid fines, 
4. To protect your intellectual property 
5. To be compliant with GDPR and CCPA guidelines 

So let’s look at each of these in more detail…

Look professional 

If you want to make money from blogging then you need to treat it like a business from day one. And an integral part of every business is to have the correct legal documents in place. 

Psst… By the way, if you want to take blogging seriously then check out my Blogging 101 guide.

Your readers and potential customers or clients will take you much more seriously if they can see that you are legally compliant. 

Having the correct legal pages on your blog will improve your trust factor and therefore increase the likeliness of your readers signing up to your email list or buying your products. 

Think about it, why would you hand over your email address, or even your credit card details, to a site that gives you no indication of how they will use your data? You wouldn’t right? Well, neither will your readers if your blog doesn’t have any legal pages in place!

Avoid lawsuits

If you don’t do things by the book then you could find yourself getting sued. And unfortunately, claiming ignorance of the law is not an excuse that will get you out of trouble! 

You could end up spending an absolute TON of money on lawyers or solicitors to sort out your legal mess. Not to mention all the stress and time that will take up.

It makes way more sense to protect yourself now rather than to have to deal with lawsuits in the future.

Why waste time and energy putting out fires when you could easily prevent them in the first place?

Avoid fines

That’s right, if you don’t pay close attention to blogging rules and regulations you could end up being slapped with a hefty fine! And that’s the last thing you want when you are trying to start a business.

Especially because these fines can be absolutely huge. 

For example, breaching GDPR regulations can result in a fine of up to €10 million, or 2% of your blog’s annual revenue, whichever amount is higher.

Yep, That’s a CRAZY amount!! 

Protect your intellectual property 

After you have put so much effort into creating bomb-ass content for your blog the last thing you want is for someone to steal all your hard work and claim it as their own. 

Having the correct legal pages on your blog such as copyright notices can help to deter intellectual property thieves as it shows that you know your rights and you mean business!

To be legally compliant with GDPR and CCPA guidelines

GDPR 

The GDPR is a Regulation of the European Union that came into force on the 25th May 2018, and It sets the rules relating to how personal data is processed.

The general concept of the GDPR is well known but the ins and outs of this regulation are very complex and trying to figure it all out on your own can be tricky. 

As I mentioned above you can incur hefty fines if you don’t get it right. And they won’t take pity on you just because you are a small blogger. According to the official GDPR website:  “Any organization that is not GDPR compliant, regardless of its size, faces a significant liability”.

So what this means is that ensuring you are compliant is absolutely crucial! 

I know this can sound scary but don’t panic! Because if you keep reading I’ll explain an easy way for you to understand everything you need to know about the GDPR. 

CCPA

The CCPA stands for California Consumer Privacy Act. Similarly to the GDPR, The CCPA is intended to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California.

The CCPA applies to any business, including blogs, that have customers from California. Therefore, it may apply even if you’re not based in California. 

So, just like the GDPR, it is imperative that you ensure that your blog complies with the CCPA.

Understanding GDPR to ensure you are blogging legally

Ok, so now you know what the GDPR is, you may be wondering how it relates to you as a blogger.

You may not think that you are processing people’s data but under the GDPR definition of data even just taking someone’s name in a comment form counts as data processing. 

Here are a few examples of how you could be processing personal data on your blog:

• Contact forms  – For instance, in your contact page you may use forms that require a name and email address
• Comment systems  – Your comment system or plugin will most likely require the user to leave their email address, name and/or URL
•  Google Analytics – GA tracks a ton of information relating to your users, such as their location and gender.
• Email sign up – If you have an email list then you are storing your subscribers’ email addresses. 
• Cookies – If you use cookies on your site, for example for affiliate marketing then the cookies will be tracking your users’ data. 
• E-commerce transactions – These could require names and addresses, credit card details, etc.
• Membership areas – Most likely you will be collecting names and at the very least email addresses. 
• Ads – Most ads will use cookies. 

Under the GDPR, you are responsible to ensure that the plugins and third-party providers that you use comply with the GDPR. This means that if you use a third party, such as Convertkit to manage your email list or Kartra (click here for a 14-day free trial!) to manage transactions, then it is still your responsibility to ensure that they are compliant. 

According to the GDPR official site:

“Many companies use third parties, like email or cloud storage services, to handle their data. While this can be helpful in adhering to the GDPR if the third party has a higher technological capacity, it does not absolve the hiring organization (i.e. the controller) from ensuring that personal data is processed in accordance with the GDPR.”

So how do you ensure that your blog legal and fully compliant with GDPR? 

Well… I am not a lawyer and I’m not here to give you legal advice BUT what I can do is point you in the direction of someone who can! 

Lucrezia Iapichino (LLB, LLM, PhD) is an international lawyer, university lecturer & GDPR expert. so you can bet she really knows her stuff!

She has created this awesome GDPR course for bloggers. 

The course breaks everything down and makes it really simple and easy to understand everything you need to do in order for your blog to be fully GDPR compliant. 

It is one of the best investments I made in my blog; as it really took the headache out of trying to understand everything and make sense of all the confusing legal details by myself. 

And with Lucrezia’s legal templates, it literally only took me a few minutes to make sure everything I needed was in place on my blog. Check out The GDPR compliant blog full course here. 

Essential legal pages you need for blogging legally

It’s not just GDPR that you need to be aware of in order to make sure you are blogging legally. There are also some other essential legal pages for bloggers. Let’s take a look at them one by one: 

Privacy policy for bloggers

Having a privacy policy on your blog is imperative. It is required by several laws around the world, such as the GDPR, The data protection act, the COPPA and many more! You could get yourself into serious trouble if you don’t have one. 

Luckily, it’s pretty straightforward to include a privacy policy on your blog. Just follow these few easy steps: 

1. Create a new page on your blog titled ‘Privacy Policy’
2. Grab a legal template written by a professional lawyer, such as this one or this one
3. Edit the template according to the instructions provided. This part is very important as this ensures that your privacy policy is relevant to you personally!
4. Copy and paste the edited template into your privacy policy page and save it.
5. Link to your privacy policy in the footer of your blog.

And that’s it! It really is that simple and shouldn’t take you longer than a few mins. 

Disclosure for blogging legally

If your blog includes affiliate links or sponsored posts (which it absolutely should if you want to monetize your blog then you absolutely need a disclosure page in place. This is essential both for legal and ethical reasons. 

Psst. If you want to get started with monetizing your blog and social influence or improve and grow your online business then check out my ebook! 

The process of adding a disclosure page to your blog is essentially the same as the privacy policy above. 

I used this legal template for my blog and I’m super happy with it. Again, it only took a few minutes to get everything in place. 

As well as a disclosure page you also need to include a short disclosure statement within any blog post, page or pdf or digital product that includes affiliate links. I simply use a reusable Gutenberg block at the top of every blog post to do this. 

Just don’t forget to link your disclosure statement back to your disclosure page. 

Legal disclaimers for bloggers

A disclaimer will help to keep you out of trouble with lawsuits, as it essentially denies legal liability. There are a few different things that your disclaimer should include such as harmless clauses, professional disclaimers, earnings disclaimer, and testimonial disclaimer. 

I recommend that you use one of the following disclaimer templates for bloggers:

Terms and conditions needed for blogging legally

A Terms and Conditions or “the Terms of Service” page is probably the most important legal page that you need to protect yourself and your intellectual property. Terms and conditions are basically the “rules” that govern everything concerning your blog and its users.

Your terms and conditions should include:

• Limitations of warranties or Disclaimers.
• How and where disputes are to be handled.
• An Intellectual Property Policy and how it concerns the owner of the blog as well as all those who visit. (This is what will stop blog copyright infringement!)
• Rights to refuse services to a particular individual or individuals.
• Refunds Policy (This is especially important if your blog sells stuff).

Terms and conditions should always be written by a legal professional as there is no way you will be able to get all of this right if you try to write it yourself.

To help you with this, I recommend these terms and conditions templates:

Contracts to keep your blog legal

There are several different contracts that you could need to ensure that you are still blogging legally as your blog and business start to grow. 

For example, if you are working with brands to create sponsored content then it is absolutely crucial to have a sponsored post contract in place. 

Not only will this protect you legally if anything goes wrong (such as the brand not paying you the agreed amount) but it will also make you look super professional to the brand and they will be more likely to form a lasting relationship with you if they can see that you are running your business properly. 

I use this sponsored posts contract from a self guru and am more than happy with it. 

Amira from a self guru is a lawyer and one of the best legal bloggers out there. She has a bunch of legal contract templates available with literally 100s of 5-star reviews. I can’t recommend her strongly enough!

Here are a few other contracts that you may need for your blog:

You can find templates for all these contracts and even more in Amira’s legal bundles, so be sure to check them out. 

Summary of Blogging legally

Whew, that was a lot of info right? 

So let’s sum up…

Using legal templates that have been written by a lawyer is the easiest and most efficient way for you to get these pages into place and to make 100% sure that you are definitely blogging legally.

So now that you know how to blog legally, what should you do next?

It’s as simple as that!

And to make it even easier for you to start blogging legally I have created a free legal checklist with links to resources and the best legal templates for bloggers. 

So make sure you grab your copy below! 

Did you find this blog post on blogging legally helpful? Let me know in the comments below.

Happy blogging!