It’s exciting to start your very own business or blog, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t legal risks that bloggers need to be aware about.
Easily avoid common legal mistakes that bloggers make by following our legal blogging guide.

Get an edge on your competition by applying this legal blogging guide, and focusing on building your business.

Legal Documents Needed For Blogging

GDPR Compliant Privacy Policy

Before GDPR, blogs and websites only needed to have a standard privacy policy, but since 2018, GDPR came into effect.
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation and it applies bloggers if they are in the European Union or not.
It allows web visitors to have more control over how their personal data is used on your website (like your name, email, phone number, etc.).

In your GDPR compliant privacy policy, you need to include the rights available to those visiting your blog and ensure legal compliance, including how you are collecting their information and how you’re using it.

There are several legal templates you can use to save you time and money instead of writing your own and taking the risk of writing it wrong or not including a crucial legal detail. If you have the money and resources, you could hire an attorney to help you. Read more about GDPR requirements with US companies.

Disclosure

If your blog uses affiliate links so you can make money when people purchase items online, you have to comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s legal requirements and give affiliate disclosures. You can get audited and fined by the FTC for not doing so.

Disclose that your blog has affiliate links and that you will earn a small commission if they purchase the items through the links,
which should appear before the link. Also provide a link to your disclosure and disclaimer page, most recommend at the top of your content so that it is visible.
Not following these rules could get you fined for the amount of money you earned.

Disclaimer

Don’t forget to add a website blog disclaimer to protect yourself from any misperceptions from your audience.
What this legal notice are trying to do is explain the limitations of your opinions and/or advice. For example, this is a legal blog but you’ll find a disclaimer explaining that this is general legal information. Of course, we hope and believe that it is great information and exceedingly helpful, but the limitation is that this is not customized legal advice. Same can be true for coaches, consultants, health professionals and many others.
The goal here is to be transparent make sure you don’t assume that your reader knows these limitations.

Terms and Conditions

This policy tells visitors how they can use your blog. You can avoid legal issues like customer disputes over products and having to issue refunds.
Terms and Conditions are necessary to have on your blog along with your GDPR privacy policy and disclosure/disclaimer.

T&Cs also allows you to choose which State you would like a dispute to take place if it ever comes to that, along with intellectual property rights, a right to terminate, indemnification clauses, etc.

Blogging with Good Manners

Never Copy Anyone’s Blog Content, Posts or Images
Copying other people’s content or images is considered copyright infringement, and you can get sued. That can be a hefty fine along with your lawyer fees.
Copyright law gives these people the legal right to control how they want people to use their content, so don’t make the mistake of using other’s work on your blog.

You wouldn’t want someone to take your content as their own, so do the same courteous and legal action and just ask that person for permission to use their content or image.

Many people make the mistake of choosing any image on Google when a lot of the images that show up in the search are copyrighted. You can change the filter settings in your search to non-copyrighted images to save yourself from legal troubles.

Added Legal Protection for Bloggers

Don’t be a sole proprietor: get an LLC to avoid legal mistakes
Getting an LLC may be the best bang for your buck you will get on the legal side. You will get liability protection to protect your personal assets.
Drafted Legal’s LLCs come with an operating agreement and video to explain how to get the most out of that liability protection.

Now that you know how to blog legally, you see it’s easy to avoid the most common legal mistakes made by bloggers.
Get an edge on your competition by applying this legal blogging guide, and focusing on building your business.

Blogging Legally Video Guide

Happy blogging!