Blog Legally: 3 Ways To Protect Your Blog

This post was most recently updated on June 28th, 2023

[This article was originally published in July 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.]

• Are you blogging to make money?
• Are you blogging legally?
• Do you have legal pages on your blog?

If your answer is NO or NOT YET, I recommend you start protecting your blog legally now. Why?

You know that blogging needs so much work, right?

You need a big effort to start a new blog, research ways to drive traffic to your site, create high-quality content, learn from the very very bottom, and so much more. The last thing you need is that your blog to be shut down or sued because you didn’t follow the law.

It’s so important to legally protect your blog, especially when you run an online business. Having the right legal pages for your blog is one vital step to protecting yourself from potential risks.

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, nor is this legal advice. It’s just information that I’ve found useful in protecting my blog that you may find helpful as well. I am not liable or responsible for any damages resulting from or related to your use of this information.

This is what I learn from the beginning because I don’t want my hard-working blog to turn into a risky business. When I started building an email list, adding affiliate links, and monetizing my blog, I knew I needed to add proper legal pages for my blog.

And nobody wants to be sued, right? YES. Of course.

Nobody wants to be sued for stealing someone else’s content, negatively affected by the information you provided on your blog, and so much more.

Stay away from all of these headaches, guys!

Here are three steps to PROTECT your blog legally.

Create Your Original Content

I have heard many times about copyright and plagiarism for those 4 years of my life as a college student. I know that is very important when I apply that in my blogging and also my real life as well.

I love researching and experiencing many new things. But that doesn’t mean you can copy-paste someone else’s content or steal their content. I heard from other bloggers who had completed work duplicated by others. It’s not great to see somebody achieving success by stealing your work.

That’s illegal, guys. You can have the same idea but pour it down into content, it’s a different deal. Focus on creating your own original content, based on your real experiences.

With your original content, you will draw your audience to your blog. Your audience trusts your content, recommendations, your work, and wants to buy what you advise. 

So, before publishing your blog post, it’s important to do some research and make sure your content follows the legal rules. You are not only protecting yourself legally but also being real and genuine.

You know that the moment you create your original content, you have your own copyright protection of it. 

“Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” – Copyright.Gov

Ask for Permission and Give Credit

Writing is the key point of blogging. You won’t get anywhere without writing, right? You need to agree with this.

When you borrow something from others, the first thing you need to do is ask for permission. The same goes with blogging or writing, if for any reason you need to use someone’s content, graphics, or photos, it’s always better to ask if you can use it.

Other bloggers will be happy to let you use their content as long as you give them the credit, as a link back to their blog (a do-follow link), and include their name and blog. And some also don’t want their content shared anywhere, this is their legal right and you need to respect it.

For example, I attended an event to which my translator friend was also invited. One of them takes a photo and posts it on social media. I want to use the photo in my post so what I need to do is ask permission if can use it or not and how they would like to be credited.

If you didn’t give proper credit to the original creator, the creator could easily land you in the plagiarism category and take legal action against you for stealing. So, always always always REMEMBER to give proper credit to the original source.

One more important thing, I need some photos for my content and I’m not good at taking good-pretty-awesome photos, so can I just go to Google and get the good photo I see? NO. You can get into legal trouble if you use it without proper permission.

I like to get free stock photos and I know many bloggers do the same thing. Even though it’s free to use, I always make sure to give credit below the photo I use.  Another way, choosing and purchasing a stock photo is going to be your good call. Because the company has its own legal obligation to you as its customer.

To be on the safe side and protect your blog legally, when you use copyright-free photos or free stock photos, always make sure you get them from reputable stock photography companies or give proper credit when using them.

Have Legal Pages On Your Blog

I saved the most important point for the last.

Most bloggers want to make money from their blogs. Me, as well. In order to do that, we all have a legal obligation to our government and our audience.

So, here I am going to share with you my experience with the one popular legal bundle from A Self Guru.

There are three key legal pages:

• Privacy Policy
• Disclaimer
• Terms & Conditions

As a new blogger, these legal pages protect you, your biz, and your audience who come often to your site.

Privacy Policy

As I see, many bloggers don’t have a Privacy Policy on their websites. The Privacy Policy tells your audience (visitors) about how you collect and use their personal information. The law requires you to disclose this information.

Whether you have an online business, blog, or website, you must let people know how you use their personal information. You can’t just pass this, you open yourself up to the potential of being sued if you’re missing this point.

The Privacy Policy needs to cover several important points:

• Let your visitors from the EU (European Union) know about how personal data is collected due to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
• Compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act
• Information about how you collect their emails through email marketing service

Having a Privacy Policy is very important! Your audience needs to know how you are using their name, email address, etc. If you don’t have it, you could face serious lawsuits.

Disclaimer

What does a Disclaimer do?

It tells your audience what the limits are to what they can or can’t do with the information, products, and services you share on your blog/site. It’s important to have a disclaimer to ensure that you don’t get sued by somebody claiming they use your information or products as professional advice.

A Disclaimer also informs about your affiliate programs and third-party links, and any financial income, such as commissions or payments you get from purchases someone makes from your affiliate links. This is very important to comply with the FTC and its strict rules.

Have you seen the disclaimer that I put at the top that claims I’m not a lawyer?

This is to protect me from anybody claiming that I gave them legal advice.

Terms & Conditions

Basically, it tells visitors about your website’s rules.

As Amira mentioned on her blog:

“They encompass your Privacy Policy and Disclaimer and serve as an agreement between you and anyone that visits, uses, or purchases from your website.” Amira – A Self Guru.

Terms & Conditions cover your intellectual property rights, how you can terminate someone’s usage of your site at your own discretion, the intended age of site visitors, refund, and exchange policies relating to your products.

If you are selling products on your site, then you should make sure your buyers are accepting your terms and conditions prior to their purchase. This will help prevent legal disputes and resolve lawsuits expeditiously if one arises down the road.

Simply put, you need to have all of them on your blog, even before you officially launch it, to comply with the laws, and protect yourself, and your blog from lawsuits. Then you will think, why not copy from somebody’s blog’s legal pages?

That would be copyright infringement. This is not the way to blog legally. No can do!

You could try writing your own, but, unless you’re a lawyer, you won’t include all the necessary information that protects you and your blog legally.

So what’s the solution?

Amira’s (A Self Guru) Legal Bundle is the least expensive way to add legal pages for your blog. Amira is not only a blogger but she is also a REAL lawyer. Her Legal Bundle is the most cost-effective way to protect your blog legally by ensuring you have these three key legal pages on your site.

This legal bundle is not some generic free templates you could find online. Instead, they are written to include the legal provisions you need on your blog, again, to protect yourself, your business, and your audience.

You could find some generic free templates online BUT there are so many provisions that were missing. There are so many holes and offers no legal protections for you. These free templates are never going to offer you the complete legal protections for your blog and the peace of mind you deserve.

Amira prepared the bundle, which of course includes the Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, and Terms & Conditions, with bloggers and their budget (a huge discount) in mind. It is super affordable and many bloggers have trusted it!

See why you need help with the Legal Bundle?

Who wants to struggle in making sure you’re covered for all of this?

There are several reasons why I’ve chosen and recommend A Self Guru’s Legal Bundle:

• I’m not a lawyer but she is. She knows her stuff when it comes to protecting yourself legally while making money from your blog.
• I need to legally protect my hard-working blog but I don’t know how to do it, properly.
• It’s super easy to customize to your own business (blog) niche. You could get done within minutes! You saved DAYS and WEEKS‘ worth of time and headaches!
• It doesn’t cost an arm and a leg! It comes with 9 awesome bonuses – that are included with each template (valued at $2,675)
• Get access to a private Facebook support group (you can ask a question, connect with bloggers, and business owners, and get feedback)
• When you’ve purchased it, you can use the pages on any of the websites and blogs you own.

I have said that you need a small investment to start blogging, plus when you want to make money from it. Purchasing the Legal Bundle can save you thousands down the line, in case you get sued!

So, please take the right steps to protect your blog from the very beginning! Don’t just use the free templates because they know when you could end up in legal trouble. It will cost you THOUSANDS of dollars to hire a lawyer.

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You need to protect your blog legally and the three above are what you want to reduce any risks with a growing, successful money-making blog.

By implementing these three key points, I believe you can take it easier to know your blog legally.

Please share this if you find it helpful and let me know if your blog is legally protected? or if are you making legal mistakes like most bloggers.