Whether you’re an influencer 📸 or salesperson 💼, ensuring your online business is lawful can be tricky.
Staying up-to-date on legislation can be time ⌛ consuming, and hiring social media attorney can be expensive 💰; however, failing to do either of these things could potentially cost you millions of dollars and destroy your business 😵.
In order to avoid these consequences, check out the top three mistakes that get online businesses into trouble with the law:
❌ No protection
If you are a health and wellness influencer, you might make a portion of your income by marketing green juice, exercise equipment 🏋️, or even diet pills 💊.
These and similar brand deals can be a great source of revenue 💲, but will most definitely require a disclaimer on your website 💻 or social media profile.
Consider this: If a product you recommended were to have negative 👎 health effects on any of your followers, you could potentially be held responsible for that damage.
Therefore, in order to avoid lawsuits, you must have a disclaimer on your site taking any damage liability out of your hands 👐.
❌ No privacy policy
Believe it or not, your website may be using cookies 🍪 and collecting information from your users without their – or your! – permission.
Therefore, be sure to find out what kind of data your website gathers and keep your users aware of their rights with a privacy policy 📜.
In addition to third party cookies, your privacy policy should also outline what data you collect from your customers, and a detailed description of how you use this information.
❌ Copyright violations
Posting other people’s content on your website or social media is a big no-no 🙅♂️ unless you’ve received permission from the original creator.
Copyright infringement lawsuits can be pricey (like, six figures pricey 🤑) so even one can mean the end of your business.
Getting permission is the only sure way to avoid a copyright lawsuit, but adhering to the doctrine of fair use is a good alternative.