10 Steps to Make Your Blog Legally Safer

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With the creation of over a million new blogs and websites every week, the online world has become the new shopping and fighting frontier for businesses and consumers. In addition to winning customers and loyal readers, businesses have to work to protect their work and to make sure their online work remains as legally safe as possible. Your blog is no exception to that legal principle.

If you blog regularly, chances are there will be a time when you may be sued or accused by someone of copyright infringement. You yourself may want to take legal action against someone else who may steal your work. If you simply take legal action or defend yourself against someone in court, chances are you will have a hard time to win if your blog already did not publicly have some legal notices and warnings in place. I started working on RA Project’s legal disclaimers and related policies last week, and decided to share with you what I have learned to always have on any successful and business blog, or any blog that makes you money in any manner or amount.

So just for you, here are 10 practical and legal notices you can immediately implement on your blog in order to start covering yourself legally for times when you may need to take any kind of legal action related to your blog. If you are serious about blogging, start implementing these 10 practical steps today to make sure your blog is legally taken seriously by others and by yourself. Remember: if you do not take your own blog or blogging legally seriously, why should I or others take it seriously? If I can recommend you to read only one RA Project article in the month of July, this article would be it.

10 Steps To Make Your Blog Legally Safer

1. Declare Your Online Advertising and Referral Practices.

   Since October of 2009, this has become the most important, yet still least focused on aspect of any online blog that earns and makes money through any channel inside or related to the United States. On your blog, you should list in any public area a disclosure or declaration policy or statement that tells any blog reader or visitor if you try to or actually do make any form of money or compensation from your blog. An example of this is the RA Project Disclosure Policy. This is probably one of the most important things to do, since avoiding this step can mean the government can come after you with axe.

2. Publish Your Privacy Policy.

   Your blog can be covered or at least helped legally on so many grounds through a privacy policy, that you may actually be setting yourself up for trouble if you do not have a privacy policy or if you avoid putting any good effort into creating a good privacy policy. A privacy policy tells your site users how their privacy is managed and handled by you when they interact with or through your website to any product or service or information. An example of this is the RA Project Privacy Policy. For RA Project, I have combined and included the E-mail privacy policy as part of the standard Privacy Policy for simplicity and clarity.

3. Publish Your Anti-Spam Policies.

   The Anti-Spam policy basically makes sure your website or anything related to what you offer are not used to spam anyone. Such a policy allows you to go after people who may be spamming your commentors or customers, and to make sure everyone knows whether or not you want to legally sue people who use your blog and brand to spam others or even spam you. An example of this is the RA Project Anti-Spam Policy.

4. Publish your Disclaimer.

   General disclaimers basically tell everyone on your blog that what you say on your blog may or may not actually produce the same effect that you have expressed in or through your website. This is extremely important, specially in cases where you tell others about how much money they can make using certain techniques or what your website is all about. Since I like customizing things to their fullest, I have combined this fully into the RA Project Disclosure Policy listed in legal step #1 above.

5. Publish your TOS – Terms of Service.

   TOS or Terms of Service basically tell your users what to overall expect in and around your site. I am at this moment working on a comprehensive and updated TOS that will be up within 24 hours of this article. Once up, it can be found and referenced via the RA Project TOS page.

6. Publish Your Sales Disclaimer Policy.

   This is extremely important if you wish to actually sell anything through anything related to your blog. Having a Sales Disclaimer policy shows what you are trying to achieve, and what users or customers should expect. This can actually be combined with the monetary declaration policy in step # 1 above, the way I have for RA Project in the RA Project Disclosure Policy.

7. Publish your TOU – Terms of Use.

   TOU, or Terms of Use, basically tells people how you hope or expect them to act in, on or around your website. Such a policy, or recommendations list, helps cover you during legal troubles when people might claim that something bad happened because of your website, or that something bad happened without them knowing about it. An updated TOU for your reference, if you wish, will be available within 24 hours on the RA Project TOU page.

8. Publish Your External Links Policy.

   If your blog has even one link to any other website on the internet, you should have an external links policy. The external links policy makes sure that users and others realize that anything that happens on or because of those external websites happens at the sole discretion of the users visiting those links, and that any and all of such events are outside your liability and responsibility. An updated RA Project ELP will be available within 24 hours.

9. Publish Your DMCA.

   If you do only one thing on your blog in terms of publishing a legal documentation, this should be it. While everything else is necessary for advanced legal coverage or for successful blogs, a DMCA, or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, basically tells everyone that in cases where someone thinks your blog or website may be copying someone else’s material without their approval or infringing on anyone else’s first, to contact you first so that you can resolve the issue. This saves a lot of legal issues because legally, with such a DMCA policy, you get a chance to solve any legal disputes before they go further than the first basic steps. As is the case today with majority of the RA Project legal documents being updated, an updated RA Project DMCA policy will be available within 24 hours.

10. Communication Policy.

    The communication policy, while almost unknown to majority of the bloggers, can actually set the ground rules of how and why you communicate with users through and via your website and other related methods of communication. Such a policy can make sure users realize your intentions behind all of your communication. The RA Project Communication Policy will be up and running within 24 hours also.

11. Bonus Step # 1: Put Your Copyright © , Trademark ™ or Registered Trademark ® Notice Online.

    This may be the simplest step you can take. It may also be the best step in terms of actually legalizing your blog today or anytime in the future. The same way RA Project uses a copyright © notice at the bottom of every page, you should use one of the above notices and disclaimers to show that your work and your blog or site brand name is owned and created by you. This can help register your name fully in the future, and can also solve a lot of disputes where someone else may start a blog or some monetary or compensatory business which may have a name or brand similar to yours for the sole or indirect purpose of monetizing on your brand name or work. This can be seen clearly on the bottom of this very page also.

12. Bonus Step # 2: Publish Your Copyright Policy.

    In its simplest form, a copyright policy basically tells others to not copy or use your work without your explicit permission, or at all. Many people will try to copy your ideas, site name or even your techniques and when possible, you may want to legally take action to make those people not infringe on your work. The RA Project Copyright Policy will be up within 24 hours.

How Are You Making Your Blog Legally Safer?

In the end, each and every step you take here using the RA Project recommended steps above helps you get your blog 1 step closer to be legally safer and more mature in the business world. The more you can cover yourself legally, the more fine tuned and efficient you can be in making your blog a better and more viable business.

Based on the above comprehensive information, is your blog legally safe? Have you done everything legally possible, short of hiring a lawyer, to cover your blog legally? What are your plans on hiring or contracting a law firm to cover your blog business?

Please share your blog urls, policy tips or links, experiences or any questions about any of the above points through your comment below. Thank you for reading. Please let me know if you need any help with your legal disclaimers or policies. Remember: this is the situation where a lawyer or a law firm can be one of your most valuable assets in the long run.

Also, please let me know if you would like each of the above 12 points [10 steps + 2 bonus steps] to be covered in detail in future articles with examples, mistakes to avoid and samples.

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