Willie Crawford Teaches REAL Internet Marketing  

If you operate a web-based business (or any other business for that matter), you ARE responsible for meeting certain legal requirements.

Not being a lawyer, I'm not sure what all of those requirements are. So this is NOT legal advice and should not be taken as such UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!

I do know that as you become more successful, people will pay closer attention to what you are doing, and that they are MUCH more likely to file lawsuits against you.

Certain legal documents on your website, when properly worded, and executed, do offer some protection.

For example, if you operate an affiliate program, you should specify the terms of your affiliate program somewhere.

You need a terms of use that basically says that if they use your website, they agree to abide by your terms, and if legal proceedings ever do result, they will (among other things) be conducted in YOUR locale.

If you collect any kind of data, you need a privacy policy stating how you handle and protect that data, and what you can and can't do with it.

Again, I'm not offering ANY legal advice. If you need that you should consult with a competent legal advisor.

I do have legal documents on many of my sites that were drafted by an attorney, and he wrote them specifically for me and my /my company’s circumstances.

Most attorneys will tell you that you really need to have an attorney go over your legal documents to make sure that you are protect because each person's situation is different.

At the same time, attorneys often reference some common database of legal documents/forms as a starting point for drafting legal documents. They don't generally start from scratch, and many of them DO have common verbiage.

Many online marketers don't want to spend thousands having some attorney draft their legal documents. They look for shortcuts and often just copy legal documents from others' websites and modify them.

Most of those legal documents AREN’T the property of the webmaster displaying them. Lawyers typically LICENSE the documents they write to webmasters/business owners. Therefore, copying those documents violate intellectual property rights and can get you in trouble.

Some lawyers do use unique phrases in their work so that they can use a site like Copyscape, and search for unauthorized users of their intellectual property. When they discover this, they DO often sue.

If you’re not familiar with Copyscape, it’s at: http://copyscape.com/



Attorney Mike Young recognizes that many people don't want to pay to have simple forms drafted, so he created software that generates many of the more common forms. I do use some of these software generated forms (with minor modifications) on some of my sites, and do recommend Mike's software if you don't want to hire a lawyer to draft your website legal documents.

You'll find Mike Young's Website Legal Forms Generator at: http://SageMarketer.com/Legal/

Willie