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Last time on the challenge I discussed the idea of creating a persona to appeal to an audience I have also covered some aspects of Email marketing and making lists safe but I want to cover your legal responsibilities.

Before we start two disclaimers

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I am not a lawyer, seriously any queries on legal issues take it to a lawyer here in the UK if you are a sole trader why not try your local Business Link where they can put you in touch with a lawyer who can answer your questions often for no charge if it???s a simple generic enquiry.

This article refers to British Legal system, why? I am a Brit, but also the UK has one of the most stringent legal systems when it comes to business online. Most of its laws and regulations are similar to those in Europe and so is a good basis for marketers, while your own country may differ particularly in the US where its very much dependent on the state you happen to be standing in.

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Creating your Legal Notice paper work

I want to cover how to create legal notice paper work that will make even a lawyer be proud. So create a new page name it Legal Notices, Disclaimer Notices or something similar and lets get started.

Who are you?

Our first step is to determine who you are and how you are trading in the UK there are various levels of trader (similar for the rest of the world) but the basics are:

• Individual ??? some one who is perhaps a hobbyist makes and declares monies but also has an alternate revenue stream (pension/job)
• Sole Trader ??? A singular person who trades (has a business) which he is the sole person in charge of the finances and who???s business assets are owned by the person.
• Non Limited Partnership - As per sole trader but a group of people manage the company and its assets within an agreed legal agreement.

• Limited Company ??? A company that is registered with Company House, such companies are registered and must present their books to company house once a year.

Beyond Limited company there are several more levels but by that stage you are into high finance world and well beyond the scope of this article. Most people reading this and trying to make money online will be Individuals, you probably have a job and are after some additional money in which case legally all you have to do is report your additional earnings to the tax man. A Sole Trader and Partnership is legally required to inform the Tax man about individual earnings but nothing more. A limited company must report its finances as an entity to Company House and individual directors who draw money but not a salary from the company must record this separately. The big advantage of a limited company other then to protect a trading name is that the company debt is not always personal debt of the directors. If you are not a limited company debts accrued by the company are held against the individuals of the partnership.

One thing to hold in mind is the British tax system has perhaps one of the strangest laws attached to it.

???Under the UK???s Tax Avoidance Schemes Regulations 2006, it is illegal not to tell the taxman anything you don???t want him to know, though you don???t have to tell him anything you don???t mind him knowing.??�

Basically this was designed to make it illegal to hide money deliberately, but to protect those who failed to make a complete tax return from harsh sentences but it is some what unenforceable but hey its worth remembering you don???t want to hide things from the tax man.
Before moving on it???s worth adding VAT a non limited business can be registered for VAT this is different from registering with Company House if the company is VAT registered it has implications as to what information you need to display.

Trading as??�
Sole Traders and Partnerships often don???t use their names when trading, but in formal documents a trading name must be declared??�

Tim Nash trading as CNMS

For example or in a partnership surnames are normally sufficient as long as the full partnership is named elsewhere so??�

Nash, Hills, Johnson trading as CNMS

Owner of a web site

When you register a web site you can choose to register it as an individual, sole trader, partnership and limited company. With the exception of Limited Company the website domain name is the property of the person who registered it, unless it is agreed differently in a partnership agreement. The information on the Whois has to be correct, for a sole trader or partnership who are VAT registered this means the address you gave on the VAT return, a limited company your company registered address and for everyone else the mailing address of your business. Sometimes you may find you need to adjust these after purchase particularly if your address of your Credit Card was different.

Every web site should have contact information on it, apart from allowing people to contact you in nearly all cases as a trader it is required. However unless you are a VAT registered or Limited Company the amount of information needed is limited to a method of contact such as email address remember though this is purely on the web site itself the information is still needed in the Whois.

The Ecommerce Regulations require the minimum information to be kept:

• A Trading Name ??? example.com is the property of CNMS
• A contact Email ??? A contact form is not enough it must be a valid email address
• Registered Address if Limited or VAT registered ??? The complete address, plus the place of registration for Limited Companies
• VAT and Company numbers ??? If company has both then both need to be displayed.

Example Who Are You section

Sole Trader
Example.com is the property of Tim Nash trading as CNMS .
For more information please contact via info@example.com

VAT Registered Partnership
Example.com is the property of Nash, Johnson, Smith trading as CNMS
For more information please contact us via info@example.com
CNMS is VAT registered, number 00000000, Address: 4 made up street, PP33 SDK, UK

Disclaimer of Brands

Andy recently discussed some of the issues related to the UKs Consumer Protection Regulations which covers many issues including the not telling the truth or pretending to be something you are not. Given our last post was all about creating personas, people to sell our site we need to cover ourselves from the act. This section is also a good place to credit photographers and external brands even theme designers if its appropriate.

Example of Brand Disclaimer

Example person images, name and description are branding of CNMS, All images are the property of Joe Blogs Photographer and are licensed for use by CNMS all models are over the age of 18 and their images are used with permission. The site theme was designed by Joe Blogs and released under license.

This may not seem very fair and indeed it is only really dealing with the legality of the act, when designing personas it is important to make sure that potential buyers do not believe they are dealing with a specific individual unless of course they are.

Trademarks

This section would also be a good place to declare trademarks referenced and used. It is unlikely you hold trademarks so this section will be declaring their use on the site. Most Trademark use is when mentioning products which are owned by the company such uses are perfectly legal but you should declare the use of trademarks if you have not done so within Articles for example

Example of Trademark Disclaimer
Within the UK: Mac Book Pro, Apple, IPod are trademarks of Apple Ltd. Google Adsense, Logo are property of Google Ltd. Use of the respective companies trademarks is for product description purposes only. Other trademarks are used within guidelines of fair use when describing products or services and are the property of their respective owners.

Disclaimer of Facts

Do you know Lying is immoral right? Its also nearly always illegal to, the distance selling regulations along with unfair trading regulations pretty much make it illegal to misrepresent your product or service in anyway this includes but not limited to.

• Inflating earning potential
• not specifying sale length
• inappropriate description of services or product

One of the more problematic part of the regulations is that you are in breach if you attempt to mislead an average user even if you are factually correct. Put simply If you state the car is Green but in reality it is Green and Yellow you have breached the act as while you are correct it is green you have not fully described the product.

Example Disclaimer of Facts

CNMS takes every effort to accurately reflect statistics and products in a true manner, occasionally statistics and other figures maybe rounded or averaged to make them simpler to understand in such cases CNMS strives to notify the reader. Occasionally CNMS is unable for legal restrictions or other reasons to provide accurate figures in such cases the reason is given prior to the figures.

Descriptions and statements declared to be factually accurate are checked prior to release and every effort is made to maintain accuracy. If a statement appears not to be accurate please contact us via our address as stated.

CNMS can not be held responsible for misrepresenting a third party product or service if the description of the product has changed since the initial release of information.
The disclaimer is primarily to cover your interaction with third parties rather then your own products when it comes to your own products no declaimer page is going to help if you miss sell a product.

Disclaimer of Earning Methods

While not strictly required in every case most people are going to need to declare how the site earns money and in particular if you use affiliate links within reviews. This is also a good place to declare paid for links if you have any note this is not a legal requirement, it???s important to understand a company guidelines and requirements such as those from Google should not be confused with something legally binding. However a notice section is a good place to include such information

Example of Earning Methods

CNMS uses affiliate links (web links which associate sales of a product to CNMS) when linking to some products, offers and services on this site. In addition advertising in the form of images and textual links are bought such advertising are declared and the purchase of advertising does not influence the content on the site. CNMS may provide additional marketing and advertising methods to third parties.

If you are selling your user lists now is the time to declare it make sure you also declare it within your privacy policy and include opt out info there to.

Example of selling your users

CNMS from time to time will pass user???s details to third parties for use in statistical analysis and marketing. CNMS is not responsible for the content from third parties.

Links Policy

You can???t prevent people linking to you, and nor do you want to however its worth declaring you have no control on what they said about the site or product likewise you should indicate you do not have editorial control of external sites.

Example Links Policy

CNMS has no control over inbound links and will not honour prices, descriptions of products and services which are different from those stated on this site without prior agreement. CNMS links to external sites and does not have editorial control and is not responsible for their content.

Nice the good news is we are pretty much there now its time to add your Privacy and Accessibility policies.

Privacy Policy

I covered this not so long ago on WebDigity so will not go through the entire policy but to highlight it needs to match with statements here, including names, addresses. For more information please check out my sample privacy policy template.

Accessibility

UK and Europe have some tough anti discrimination guidelines but almost no one knows what an accessible site is though most agree it is probably a site that reaches WAI level 1 & 2 as set down by W3C. Most blogs should easily meet these requirements presuming your site does so your declaration should be fairly straight forward.

Example Accessibility Disclaimer

Where possible we try to maintain this site to WAI level 1 & 2 priority standard and well within the UK and EU disability guidelines however if you have a problem while reading or commenting on this blog please do contact us as described below.

Putting it all together, ok so this was a long post, but your complete policy should look something like our Legal Notice. This might seem like a lot of work and you may think that so few people read such documents why bother?

Two reasons 1) Ass covering, its the law and if its not where you are it will protect you against random law suits 2) Requirement, more and more affiliate and advertising companies are looking for privacy policies and declaring paid content.

Remember IAMNL (I am not a lawyer) any one making money should get a lawyer in their home country to read through any legal notice.

A few months ago I wrote an article looking at Affiliate management called Affiliate marketing from the other side. At the time I discussed how Affiliate management had helped Aaron Wall to have one of the most linked to sites in the SEO (search engine optimisation) community. Since then a few things have changed but I think Affiliate management is still a crucial part of any serious online business. So I have gone and reviewed 3 of the best products on the market ok two of the best and a .net script which just works.

Affiliate Management Software Comparison

So what are you waiting for if you haven’t already taken the plunge and are self managing then hopefully this will help you make up your mind which software to use.

So the recent press headlines here in the UK have not been great for British Airways their brand spanking new terminal “T5″ has gone down like a lead balloon. The disaster now means thousands of bags are separated from their owners indeed many people even the most loyal BA customer I suspect are now thinking it’s time to look at what the other airlines are doing.

So it comes as no surprise that one airline is currently flying high. At the start of the year Virgin Atlantic started a ?�6 million pound advertising campaign to promote their new first class lounge and existing services at Heathrow. Now Virgin is a brand everyone is familiar with because of one guy but it has recently attempted to move the Virgin brand away from being the soul domain of Richard Branson and attempt to sell on the individual companies merits.

Affiliate Marketing with Virgin Atlantic

So what this got to do with affiliate marketing, well once you have started to get your first few cheques in, it’s worth putting some a side into a quick project slush fund. Not millions just a couple of hundred dollars for when events are just to quick to miss. So lets see how I would spend that fund right now:

1. Buy a domain name
2. Setup a quick mini site 3 pages or so on the current problems at T5
3. Create a dedicated landing page for Virgins new lounge
4. Base the headlines around the air line that gets you and your baggage their
5. Sign up for Virgin Atlantic 2 Affiliate schemes
6. Drive traffic

Buy a domain name

Domain names are cheap, so it’s worth setting the majority of your projects up on their own domain name for a $8 investment you have nothing to lose, if the project fails and or is similar to existing projects you can redirect the domain when you are finished for a little benefit from search engine traffic. When buying a domain name either keep it very generic or very specific, in this case be care to avoid domain names with Virgin Atlantic, Premium Economy or Upper Class in them as the Virgin affiliate program prohibits those terms. Given the current crisis and it will be in peoples minds right the way through the summer is baggage I would start there. Indeed flywithyourbaggage.co.uk is available from me if anyone is interested

Setup your mini site

We don’t really need to tell you how to do this part, suffice to say content, template rinse repeat. Find a suitable theme if your pushing the first class lounge aspect or Virigin all the way then Reds and Purple colour scheme will be your best bet. There is plenty of content out there, so use your imagination or scraper depending on your hat preference.

Create a Dedicated Landing Page

Or two, it really is worth creating specific pages dedicated to Virgins Services and those of others I’m using Virgin as the example, but let’s take Virgins Chauffeur pick up service, their are plenty of companies offering this service many with Affiliate Programs of their own. Each product your planning should have it’s own page. You might even want to consider a US to UK page and a UK to US version.

Sign up for Virgin Atlantic 2 Affiliate schemes

Following up from the 2 pages their are in fact 3 Virgin Atlantic Flights affiliate program and several others based round their credit cards. Both of the ones we are interested in for this article are run by the same company but require you to sign up twice. Why? Well the first is the UK based version of the program, this allows you to make money selling Flights booked from the UK to the US and to sign up you need to visit AffiliateFuture UK To make money booked from flights from US to the UK you will need the US version AffiliateFuture USA their is also a European option. Each program only pays out in its currency Sterling, Dollars, Euros and only by wire transfer. This is not a problem as your bank will do the conversions for you automatically just be aware when your looking at your currency values if you have never worked in multiple currencies before.

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GeoTarget - Given you are using two programs you don’t want a Brit accidentally clicking your US link so Geotarget this is not very hard you could use Nick PHP Class to make sure Brits only see the right code

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Drive traffic

You can drive traffic to your site via all the normal methods while the story is hot I would suggest PPC just be careful what you bid on. Terms such as Virgin Atlantic are out but Baggage Chaos is in. Focus on the terms that are topical today. Avoid things like Cheap Flights the cost per click certainly isn’t cheap. Ultimately while this example is a throw away site it could be a long term investment. Baggage going missing is a fact of life and people will be discussing terminal 5 for the next 10 years so don’t just use PPC build up more long term traffic streams and search engine traffic.

This was a quick example

This was an example in a pretty unsaturated market, but with a couple of hundred dollar slush fund and an eye on the news (ideally before the story breaks big time) you can make these sort of opportunist sites. Affiliate Future have an interesting range of travel related sites and I picked virgin because they are riding just so high at the moment. Just think in a few years time you could be promoting Virgin Galactic and making money off people going into space!