From the beginning, I knew I had to be legally protected when starting my blog. At least to have my peace of mind at night.
Starting your blog is a major achievement and to start on this exciting journey there are so many things to be on top of.
Even before you launch your blog, you have so much to do, and probably, so little time!
Then, you’re busy writing your posts, finding new ideas, creating your graphics, being active on social media…
So, what ends up happening is that you forget the most important part of your blogging business. The legal aspect of it.
As you’ve probably noticed, blogging is so much more than publishing amazing content. When you’re blogging, you’re running a business, and like any other business, you have to be legally protected.
I’m sure that even reading the word legal sounds scary, right? I was scared too, until I discovered that legally protecting my blog isn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
Let me show you how you can easily protect your business!
Let’s get started!
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost for you. Please read my full disclosure for more information.
Have you started your blog already? If not you can follow this easy step-by-step guide.
Why is it important to legally protect your blog?
Legally protecting your blog is important for so many reasons!
You work so hard on creating content, promoting it, and growing your email list. Every second you work on your business will be precious time that you want to protect as much as possible.
You may think that nothing bad will ever happen to you. Also, you may be thinking that your readers are awesome and would never do anything to harm you, or you may even think that you can get away with not protecting your blog while you aren’t making any money.
All of that may be true, but the contrary can also happen.
You have to expect the unexpected! And when the unexpected happens, you have to be prepared. Or else you may lose everything that you’ve worked so hard for!
You want to protect your business from expensive lawsuits, protect your content from being stolen, and most importantly, comply with the law.
Making sure you’re following the law will give you peace of mind. And you have to protect your blog from the moment you start!
I can’t stress enough how important it is to legally protect your content. So, if you aren’t already taking measures to ensure the continuity of your business, I suggest you keep reading and fix that as soon as possible.
How can you legally protect your blog?
Now that we’ve talked about how important it is to protect your blog, let’s talk about how you can do it.
Include legal pages on your blog
To make your blog legal, it’s required by law that you have 3 important pages:
If you don’t know what these are, you can take a peek at mine which is linked above.
Each of these pages will serve different purposes, for you to be as protected as possible.
A thing to keep in mind is that you can’t copy anyone else’s legal pages, as it is incredibly illegal to do that, and you’ll get in serious trouble.
Now, should you do these pages yourself? Definitely not!
Do you have to spend loads of money to book an appointment with a lawyer and have them write your legal pages for you? Absolutely not!
Here’s the perfect solution: The legal templates bundle.
Why use the legal templates bundle?
These templates were created by Amira who is a lawyer with lots of years of experience. She is also a blogger.
Since Amira is a blogger, she fully understands everything you need to legally protect yourself, your information, and your business.
With her templates, you can easily adapt the legal information to fit your business. You just have to fill in your business information and you’ll have your legal pages ready in no time!
Honestly, these templates saved me a lot of headaches. I was stressing so much about how to write these legal pages for my blog.
I found some free legal templates online. However, I was constantly worried that they weren’t enough to fully protect my blog.
And after purchasing Amira’s templates, I can tell you that whatever it is you find online to protect you legally, won’t be enough!
Trust me, it’s always best to rely on someone who’s an expert in the area. This way, you won’t get any unpleasant surprises in the future.
Want to know what’s the best part? You can get them at a really low price, compared to the value you would have to pay if you consulted a lawyer. And, you will have them up and running on your blog in 15 minutes or less!
How awesome is that? You’ll also be notified whenever there are legal changes that apply to these templates so that they’re always updated.
Now, let’s get into these pages in more detail, shall we?
Privacy Policy page
You are required by law to create a privacy policy page when you’re collecting personal information from your readers.
Every website collects information from its visitors in one way or another.
Whether you’re collecting their name, email address, or credit card details, you have to have a Privacy Policy Page.
The primary purpose of this page is to inform your visitors of which information is being collected from them, and how you will use it.
As you can see, this is important. If you think about it, wouldn’t you want to know what websites are doing with your personal information?
That’s why it’s so important to have this page set up on your blog. This way people can easily consult this information.
Placing it on your footer will be a great way to keep it accessible for your visitors.
Disclaimers Page and Disclosures
Disclaimers page
As a blogger, you share your knowledge and strategies to help your audience achieve their goals. However, the strategies you use on your blog may not work for all of your readers.
This page limits the legal liability of the content published on your blog. It lets people know that they shouldn’t take your information as professional advice. This protects you from possible lawsuits.
In other words, this page states that you won’t be held responsible for what it’s done with the information from your blog.
It’s important to adapt these disclaimers to your specific niche.
Let’s say you’re blogging in the health niche and you provide advice about healthy eating. You have to adapt your disclaimer to fit your specific niche. In this case, you must let people know you aren’t their nutritionist.
Disclosures
Legal disclosures are required when you’re promoting other people’s products on your blog or are posting sponsored content.
These are legal statements that let your readers know what is your relationship with the products, brands, or affiliate partnerships you’re promoting on your blog.
As you can probably understand by now, having a disclaimers and disclosures page is very important to protect you!
Terms and Conditions Page
Think of this page as your website rules. It’s a seriously important page that needs to be created properly, to be effective in court, in case of a lawsuit.
Writing this page won’t be easy. Even if you attempt to write it, there’s no guarantee that you’ll have covered everything you need, to be legally protected.
It’s best to have your Terms and Conditions page written by a lawyer to ensure your readers are fully aware of your website rules.
To get these legal pages…
You can get these templates separately, if you only need a specific one, by clicking on the links I dropped above.
Or you can get the legal templates bundle, which will already include these 3 pages and other free bonuses. It will also be much more affordable than buying them separately.
Legal Templates Bundle
Other measures to blog legally
Even though the legal pages I mentioned above are of extreme importance, there are other aspects to consider when it comes to blogging.
Use photos licensed for commercial use
Nowadays you can’t just go online anymore and use whatever photo you like, even if they are the most beautiful and irresistible photos you’ve seen in your life.
For your content, I recommend you either use your photos or use images from a stock photo library.
You have to be very careful with the pictures you post on your blog as you can get sued if you’re caught with someone else’s photos on your blog, without their permission.
For this reason, I advise you to invest in taking quality pictures, or accessing some of these websites that contain stock photos (both free and paid) that you can use:
- Pexels
- Unsplash
- Pixabay
- Barnimages
- Canva
Use licensed fonts
The same goes for the types of fonts you’re using throughout your blog, social media, and so on.
I recommend that whenever you find a font you’re interested in using, look for its terms and check if they are licensed for commercial use to keep you safe from problems.
If you use WordPress, you can choose from the fonts that are already available for you.
Be cautious with this when creating your graphics for Pinterest or social media. If you’re using Canva for your designs, it’s also best to use their library of fonts.
If, by any chance, you feel like you need other fonts, you can use the 1001 Fonts website to search for more.
Just make sure to always read their terms before using them in any way.
Don’t steal other people’s content
It’s ok to research other blogs to get inspired, or even to learn more about the topic you’re writing about. However, what you shouldn’t do is copy any content from other blogs.
It’s important to create your original content.
I get it if you think that everything has already been written by now. You may also be blogging on a very saturated niche.
So, how do you create original content given this? By writing posts with your own opinion and words. You want to share your unique vision on the subject you’re writing about.
I like to create my posts first without reading or researching other information. This way, I can share my unique view on the topic.
Once I’m finished, then I go ahead and research other content online to see if I might have missed something that could be useful for my audience.
So here you have the steps you have to follow to have your website as safe and problem free as possible.
Given that your blog is your business, and I know you’re working hard to succeed, it’s important to be protected legally.
It would be sad to see all of your hard work go down the drain for some tiny detail that you missed out on.
So, how are you protecting your blog? How long have you been blogging? Tell me all about it in the comments.
See you in my next post!
