3 Simple Tweaks To Ensure Your Blog Is Legally Protected
Starting an online blog is a simple way to help connect with readers and generate some additional income for yourself each month. With more and more bloggers choosing to use their sites as money-making ventures, legal matters are playing a more prominent role in site design.
Here are three simple tweaks that you can make to your existing blog to ensure that it is legally protected in the future.
1. Add a copyright statement to your blog.
Personal blogs are filled with intellectual property that you have created in order to help attract and retain readers. The last thing you want is to have someone steal your content or graphics and use them to create a competing blog.
You should take the time to add a simple copyright statement that lets blog visitors know you are the sole owner of all content on your site and outlines the terms of use you are willing to allow. A copyright statement can ensure that you have legal standing to seek damages should someone start using any of the information published on your blog without your permission.
2. Always include a disclosure statement on sponsored posts.
Working with a specific brand to review one of their products or services can be a great way to add content to your blog. If you are receiving compensation in exchange for your write-up (whether in the form of free product or money), you need to let you readers know that you were paid to write the blog post.
A simple disclosure statement incorporated into the footer of your sponsored posts will protect you against potential legal problems in the future. If you have older posts that were sponsored, you should retroactively add a disclosure statement to these posts to ensure maximum legal protection.
3. Build a library of stock photos to incorporate in your posts.
You don't want anyone stealing original content or graphics from your blog, so you shouldn't steal photos from other sources to incorporate into your own blog posts. If you don't have the ability to generate original photography to accompany your blog posts, you should build a library of stock photos to rely on instead.
Stock photos are images for which the photographer has given full-use rights to the public. You can feature these photos on your blog without worrying about potential copyright lawsuits being filed against you in the future.
With a few simple tweaks, you can protect your blog from experiencing legal problems in the future. Contact a lawyer, like AMS Law Group, for more.