New FTC Rules and Guidelines – Why Do I Need Legal Statements On My Website?
Linda Joseph and I had an incredible teleseminar Thursday night about the new FTC rules and guidelines. If you were with us live on the call, you know that it was 1 hour packed with lots of strategies and tips to help you understand what the new rules were all about.
If you weren’t able to join us, you can still get your copy of the call recording here:
http://www.essdreamteam.com/ftc-offer.php
We invited you to email us your questions at the end of the call, and we’ve had great response. I’m sharing those questions with all of you through this blog so that everyone can benefit from the discussion. (Please note that there is no legal advice being dispensed on this website.)
One of the questions was, “Why do I need legal statements on my website?”
At the end of the teleseminar, I recommended a set of legal statements written by attorneys to help you stay compliant with the new FTC rules. Because of the new FTC rules, almost everyone will need to have certain disclaimers and disclosures on their website.
If you are in business online, then you really do need to stay compliant with the current rules and regulations. Otherwise you risk losing everything if the FTC comes after you with a lawsuit.
Even in a best case scenario where you didn’t do anything wrong, you’ll have to take hours of your time to deal with the FTC and possibly hire an attorney to represent you and your company.
The fastest, easiest, and least expensive solution is to use a set of up-to-date legal statements on your website that have been written by an attorney. It’s not as custom tailored a solution as hiring an attorney to personally draft up legal documents especially for your company. But with a price range of $97 - $147, it’s a lot less expensive.
Sure, you could read the FTC rules and write up something yourself for your website that you “think” will do the job. But do you really want to take that chance when your entire business is at stake?
Let’s think about that a moment…
I invest $97 now and get a comprehensive set of legal statements that help me stay in compliance with the FTC and offer protection against lawsuits.
Or I spend $10,000 (or more) later in lost hours and attorney fees defending myself when a lawsuit is filed.
I don’t know about you, but I chose the $97 solution.
After all, we live in a society where frivolous lawsuits are brought every day against well-meaning business owners. These legal statements help me stay compliant with the FTC rules and protect me from frivolous lawsuits. I call that a 2-for-1 bonus.
If you have any doubts about how serious the need for legal statements is, I suggest you check out the webpage for AutoWebLaw Pro. It’s the solution I’m using for my legal web forms. You can see a sample by clicking on one of the legal statement hyperlinks at the bottom of this webpage.
And if you want a good laugh, click on the Terms of Use link at the bottom of the page. It’s hilarious!
Related posts:
- New FTC Rules and Guidelines – How Does This Apply to Advertising? Here’s another highlight from the interview between Jim Edwards and FTC assistant deputy, Mr. Rich Cleveland. It’s regarding advertising and...
- New FTC Rules and Guidelines – The Death of Affiliate Programs Has Been Exaggerated But Not By Much I thought I was almost ready for the new FTC guidelines that go into effect on Dec. 1, 2009 until...
- New FTC Rules and Guidelines – The Problem with the New Testimonial Rules One of the FTC examples covered during our recent teleseminar on the new FTC rules and guidelines concerned the new...
- New FTC Rules and Guidelines – Using Typical Results in Testimonials The FTC is very concerned about typical results used in testimonials. Here’s another highlight from the interview between Jim Edwards...
- New FTC Rules and Guidelines – Use Your Own Results for a Testimonial Do the same rules about “typical results” that apply to customer testimonials also apply when stating your own results? Here’s...
- New FTC Rules and Guidelines – Do You Need to Delete Old Testimonials? In light of the new FTC rules, do you need to delete old testimonials? There was a lot of concern...
- New FTC Rules and Guidelines – When to Use “Material Connection” Disclosures The FTC has announced some major changes to their advertising rules regarding testimonials and endorsements. And one of the biggest...
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October 24th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Point of law….
Guilt is a matter of intent. Meaning that to be guilty it must be shown that intent was made to break the law. Sadly, ignorance is not an excuse as ignorance is considered wanton evasion. Kind of crazy when you think about it? Stupidity is a crime! So to show intent to comply is, in fact, a defense. The question then is a matter of how that presentation is made.
Does intent, “Disclosure”, have to be made on the same page, or is a link satisfactory? Meaning can one have a legal page placed to handle a whole site, or multple sites?
December 18th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Dear Author http://www.essdreamteam.com !
This answer, is matchless