3 Essential Blog Legal Pages

Find out the 3 essential legal pages you need for your new blog. It’s so important to get your blog’s legal pages sorted before you start posting new content.

Hey mamas, this is going to be a super-quick post just to make you aware that as the owner of a money-making blog, you’re now also a business woman!

Just let that sink in for a moment. Feels good doesn’t it!

You’re just starting out on your entrepreneurial adventure. And it’s time to start thinking about your blog as a business.

Even if you haven’t actually launched it yet.

Read this post for in depth advice on how to start a blog.

One thing you probably haven’t thought about much (or at all) are the legal pages and notices that you’re going to have to add to your blog if you plan to make money from it.

So getting your legal notices in order is one of the most important steps to take BEFORE you start adding content to your blog.

** Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and this post does not contain legal advice. I’m just sharing some of the things I’ve learned as a blogger.**

Don’t have time to read this now? Pin it for later.

3 Essential Legal Pages Needed for new bloggers

Why Does My Blog Need Legal Pages?

It is completely necessary to have your blog’s legal pages in place as early into your blogging journey as possible.

Putting this in place protects you and all your hard work.

Say, for example, you have a really great blog. It looks good. And is full of great content. What are you going to do if somebody copies the whole lot?

Word for word. Theme for theme. Image for image. Post for post.

Or, maybe someone follows your advice and tries out a great new beauty cream but they suffer negative side-effects.

Perhaps you forget to mention that all those money-making links in your blog posts are affiliate links.

There are so many different scenarios where you could land yourself at the deep end of a legal battle.

I’m not trying to scare you away from blogging.

I just want you to know about this right from the start, so you can cover yourself as soon as you start your new blog.

The good news, dearest mama, is that you can avoid these and many other potential legal issues simply by posting a couple of legal pages and notices on your blog.

Not sure what to focus on during your first month of blogging? Click here for my ULTIMATE guide.

Complying With Third Party Requirements

Another reason why you need to set up your blog’s legal pages is because many of the third parties you’re going to use require you to do so.

Take Google Analytics, for example. This is the most powerful tool to help you understand how your blog is performing.

(Don’t worry, I’m planning to write a more detailed post about Google Analytics soon!)

Google Analytics’ terms of service are very clear that you must have a privacy policy on your blog if you’re going to use their service.

This is also true for AdSense (Google’s ad placement service) and Amazon Associates, as well as many other third party services that you might use on your blog.

What Legal Pages Do I Need?

Okay, so we know that we DO need legal pages on our blog. And we know why we need them.

So now we’re going to discover what pages we need in place BEFORE we launch our new blog (or as soon as you realise you need them!)

You’re definitely going to need:

Privacy Policy
Cookie and GDPR Policy
Copyright Notice

Privacy Policy

A Privacy Policy is essential for your blog. It’s required by law.

If you’re collecting any sort of personal data from your audience (names and email addresses for your newsletter, for example) you have to state how you collect that information, what you do with it, how long you’ll keep that data and who you share it with.

My Privacy Policy page is linked in the footer of every page on my website. You can access it here too.

You have nothing to hide. Your new blog is totally legitimate and having your Privacy Policy in place helps to build trust with your audience.

Eu flag in a padlock for GDPR and Cookie notice

Cookies and GDPR Policy

Again a Cookies Policy and GDPR policy are essential for your blog. They are required by law to protect EU citizens.

Even if you’re a blogger living and working from outside Europe, you need to have these in place because it’s likely that people from the EU will be visiting your blog.

Both of these policies are linked to privacy and handling private data.

It’s worth noting that visitors to your blog have to opt-in to accepting cookies from your blog. You cannot assume their acceptance unless the opt-out.

Copyright Notice

This isn’t required by law. But it sure is a good idea to protect the content of your blog.

A Copyright Notice informs visitors to your blog that the content you’ve posted is yours and they can’t use it without your permission.

Copyright law automatically gives you ownership over the content you create and publish on your blog. So that 8,000-word blog post that you busted your butt researching and writing, for example. You’re gonna want to make sure nobody can claim that as their work.

Having your Copyright Notice displayed means that you can take legal action if someone copies your work without your permission.

Summary

We’ve learned a lot about the legal notices we’re required by law to display on our blog.

We know that we need legal pages and we know why. And we’ve discovered that we need three legal notices in place BEFORE we launch our blog.

These are:

Privacy Policy
Cookie and GDPR Policy
Copyright Notice

The best advice I can give you is to have a certified lawyer draft your legal pages and notices.

You can find free templates for each online. But you need to be sure they include all the terms needed for your blog.

Finally, you can use WordPress Plugins to generate your blog’s legal pages.

I’ve not covered disclaimers here. And I’ve not discussed Terms of Service either. Both are important for covering yourself in the event of a legal dispute. And I’ll cover these in a separate article soon.