Blogging? Don’t Break the Law
Blogging is a great creative release, and it can be a fantastic way to earn money if you get good at it and build up a following. However, if you think that you can just purchase a hosting package and start posting your thoughts, feelings and sales pitches with wild abandon, you need to think again!
You see if you are putting your own words out there, and especially if you are doing so to make money, you need to abide by the laws of the land, if you don’t want to get sued at least!
Of course, you shouldn’t let the threat of legal action out you off from what could be a great new venture – just make sure you know what you’re doing first. Here are some of the most important legal issues you need to be aware of:
Declaring Your Income
Money earned on the internet is still money, which means that you need to treat it like you would treat any other income you make and declare it to the relevant bodies. Even if you make only a few pennies from advertising on your blog, you will need to include this on your tax return, and of course, that means that you need to register as self-employed as soon after setting up your blog and monetizing it as possible!
Declare Paid for Posts
Recently, the law was changed to say that bloggers who are paid to review or promote various products and services must declare that fact to their readers. There is a very good reason for this – as a blogger, you have a very real influence over your readers, and your word could sway them to make various choices. They need to know that they can trust your word and knowing if you have been paid to post something or whether you have written it off your own back will help them with this. Anyway, you don’t want your blog to be little more than a sly infomercial now do you?
Include Contact Details
Depending on where you are in the world, you may need to also disclose a business address and telephone number in your blog. This isn’t the case in the UK right now, but if you are making money from your blog, it is only a matter of time before this is the case – as it is in the United States. This might seem like a scary prospect, but it’s perfectly fine to use a virtual address from a company like physicaladdress.com to maintain your personal privacy and security. It’s worth doing even if you aren’t compelled to because it does give your blog an increased air of respectability which will help you to build trust with your readers.
Have a Privacy Policy
If you collect your readers’ email addresses via subscriptions or when they make a purchase for your blog, then it is vital that you not only have a privacy policy in place but that you actually adhere to it and respect the privacy of your readers. You should never be tempted to leak their email addresses or identities for any reason, nor should you sell your email list for profit. This will remove any trust your readers have in you, and it could see you hit with legal action.
Fact Check
If you are claiming that something you write on your blog is a fact, then you better make absolutely sure that it is indeed a fact. Otherwise, you could quite easily end up getting sued by a disgruntled person or company. If you’re giving your opinion on something, you should be okay, but it’s probably still a good idea to look up your country’s libel laws, so that you always stay on the right side of legal. http://www.urban75.org/info/libel.html is a good place to start if you’re in the UK. However, if you’re ever in doubt, just leave it out!
Use Royalty Free Images
If you plan to use images on your blog – and it’s a good idea to do just that, both for SEO purposes and because they make your blog look better – you need to ensure that, if you don’t want to pay for images, and you aren’t creating your own, you use royalty free images from places like Pexels.com. You also need to ensure that you attribute images to the source if you want to stay on the right side of the law; this is something that you may also need to do even if you do pay for the rights to use an image.
Make Your Work Original
I can’t tell you how many times, in the course of researching a particular topic, that I’ve come across the same blog post on several different websites, some of these posts will have been reposted with permission, but the vast majority of them have simply been stolen from the author and used for another website’s personal gain. This is something that you should never do! Think about how hard you work on producing a great blog post – how would you feel if someone then stole it and presented it as their own? Pretty annoyed I’d imagine! Apart from the annoyance, stealing someone else’s work is copyright infringement, and it could leave you in hot water.
Avoid Trolling
I’m sure you would never stoop to posting hurtful and disgusting comments about people, but there are some bloggers out there who do, and they are skating on very thin ice, especially now when online trolling and making threats towards others on the web is being taken a lot more seriously than it ever was before. If you have a problem with someone, either sort it out with them, vent to a trusted friend or keep it to yourself, – don’t post it on your blog where it could gain traction and possibly even action from the police if it is considered serious in nature!
I hope this has helped you to see where the limits are with blogging and what you need to do to make it all legal and above board!
