Ensuring you’re complying with the law while protecting your $ and your content!
Plus, upcoming deadlines for working with me 1:1 this year
Happy Friday!
A lot of business owners are scrambling to get Black Friday offers up, but are missing the most important part of the whole process…the legal docs that actually secure the payments for the offers and protect their content. You also have legal requirements when you’re collecting personal information (e.g. someone’s name, email, and credit card info), posting affiliate links, using testimonials and more:
Lawyer-Drafted Website Policies
I’m like a broken record with these, but that’s because they’re a legal requirement for online businesses, and critical to protecting not just all of your original content on your webpages and sales pages, but also, protecting you from someone coming to your website, misusing your info, and trying to hold you legally responsible.
These policies go in the footer of where you’re selling whether that’s your webpage or your sales page. A Privacy Policy is a legal requirement and you can be fined without one. Recently, I’ve audited several business owners have taken from free (and even paid!) services and they weren’t compliant. Remember, your website or sales page is accessible globally, people can purchase from different countries; your Privacy Policy needs to be compliant with global data privacy laws.
Even a pop up Black Friday offer should have a Privacy Policy linked in the footer!
The other two policies you need are Terms & Conditions to protect your intellectual property, guide behavior on your website, outline your refund policy and more. A Disclaimer Policy protects you from people misusing your info on your page, and is a legal requirement if you have affiliate links, post testimonials, etc. I’ve seen many business owners include new affiliate links for other businesses’ Black Friday sales. Make sure you disclose those links in your Disclaimer Policy (In the U.S., not disclosing this is an FTC violation…)
Contracts for each of your offers
Offers sold from your website or sales page need contract terms specific to each offer. This includes not just your higher ticket offers like coaching, but also, paid intensives, VIP days, paid webinars, etc. (Fill in the blank contract templates for all of these offers and more can be found via the Contracts tab on my website). Just because something costs less doesn’t mean you want to give it away for free, have someone steal it and resell it, or have someone repeatedly violating your boundaries by paying for a low touch offer and expecting high touch! We have templates for pretty much everything you’ll need; respond back if you need clarity or direction.
Contract Process and Workflow
This is going to vary depending on your business and your offers, but for offers where someone is checking out completely via your website, e.g. you’re not sending them a contract to sign:
Embed the contract terms for that offer in your checkout. Have an affirmative click to agree where users have to click to agree to your terms before completing their checkout. Have the terms hyperlinked to the bottom of your webpage or sales page. So, you’d have your website policies, and then you’d have your Terms of Use for your specific program.
If they’re going to e-sign your contract vs. agreeing to your terms on your page (recommend, esp. for higher ticket), you can still automate the workflow (see my Trademarks page for how I did it).
Here’s an example of a workshop I planned to launch but didn’t have a chance yet (relatable?)
You’ll see at the bottom the Workshop Terms of Use specific to the workshop and my Privacy Policy. This was going to be attached to my website that has my Disclaimer Policy and Terms and Conditions policies as well so that’s why they’re not linked in the sales page footer. The point I’m trying to make is that the contract for the workshop is linked at the bottom of the page as is the Privacy Policy, since I’m collecting personal information when people checkout. The contract terms are also linked to the checkout page itself. LeadPages (the software I used) doesn’t have the functionality requiring someone click to agree to the contract terms, so I added the contract again at the bottom. Programs like Kajabi allow you to do both. If any of this is unclear, please respond back and I’ll clarify!
For higher ticket offers like 1:1 coaching or 1:1 services, clients should be e-signing contracts. It’s still possible to automate this process. You can see how I automated contract signing into my workflow here: https://solivagantlegal.com/trademarks/ where business owners can view my info and process, sign my contract, pay their invoice, and book their call all via the automated workflow.
Affiliate Requirements:
Are you posting affiliate links for other businesses’ products or services? You have to disclose that you’re an affiliate in a Disclaimer Policy in your footer.
Running your own Affiliate Program? You need Affiliate Terms and Conditions to outline your commission structure, provide details on sign-up and acceptable use of your affiliate link, etc.
Questions on any of the above? Contact me via the Contact Us form at the bottom of this page or send me a DM on Instagram!
2023 DEADLINE TO WORK WITH ME 1:1!
If you’re looking to trademark, have contracts reviewed, or have custom contracts drafted before the end of the year to deduct on this year’s taxes, here are some important deadlines:
I’ll be out of the office from December 4 to January 5ish, 2024. To be honest, I’m a little terrified about taking that much time completely off, hence the “ish.” I’ll be off (and I mean off the grid as much as possible for the first time since I started this business! Follow me on IG for pics of Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands and wherever else I end up gallivanting). I don’t outsource anything legal and will only be monitoring my inbox for updates from the Trademark Office for my current trademark clients, so please plan accordingly!
There’s slightly more flexibility for current custom contracts clients if we don’t have to have a call to complete your project, but all work needs to be completed by December 4 at the latest, so email me ASAP!
You can book calls via the links above. For contracts, info on the process is included within the link, but in a nutshell: you’ll book a call via the link on my website and I’ll have you send your current contract(s) to me so I can take a quick peek before we speak. After we speak about what you need specifically, I’ll email you pricing based on how long it will take to complete. If it’s aligned, I’ll send a contract and invoice and get started. You’ll have you contract(s) in ~ 2 weeks, along with an explanatory video walking you through what everything means.
Have a happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate!