Congratulations on taking an important step to protect yourself and your business with a Privacy Policy!
Generally, within 24 hours of receiving your message, I will send you an email with a cc to Hans, the VP at Termageddon. This will alert him to email you to set up a 15-minute phone call to get you all set up with your Privacy Policy. Please be sure that you have whitelisted webmaster@dramatic-design.com in your email program, so you don’t miss my email.
Your subscription also includes a few other policies that you may want to take advantage of. I have included descriptions below, so you can be prepared to make those decisions. The other Policies that are included with your subscription are:
Terms & Conditions
Terms and Conditions or, sometimes referred to as Terms of Service, are a legal contract between you, the website or application operator and the visitor or user. Terms and Conditions state the rules.
What are some advantages to having Terms and Conditions?
- Terms and Conditions answer frequently asked customer questions. For example, if you own an eCommerce store, these rules will spell out whether you offer cancellations and refunds, thereby helping answer customer questions before they buy.
- Terms and Conditions allow you to spell out what warranty, if any, you offer on your products. This will help mitigate damages in case your product breaks or something else goes wrong.
- Terms and Conditions help you protect your intellectual property by stating that all logos, designs, product names, etc. on your website or application belong to you. They also spell out who to contact in case a user sees someone else using your intellectual property, thereby helping you preserve your rights.
- Terms and Conditions help you choose where you would like to resolve disputes with the visitors of your website. This can help you save money by placing dispute resolution close to you.
- Terms and Conditions can help you lessen the maximum amount of damages that you may be responsible for.
- Lastly, Terms and Conditions can help you keep your website or application a welcoming place for all. If visitors can post on your website, you may specify what types of posts are forbidden (e.g. discriminatory posting), thus making sure that your visitors are not offended or hurt by the content.
Who should have Terms and Conditions?
It is recommended that every website and application have Terms and Conditions.
Disclaimer
Why Disclaimers Are Important
While we rarely watch exercise videos because, let’s face it, an evening watching Lost reruns is much more enjoyable, we have noticed the warning prior to the start of the exercises. You’ve heard it too – “always consult a physician prior to starting a new exercise routine, stop immediately if you feel dizzy, etc.” This type of warning is also called a Disclaimer and serves to reduce your liability if someone gets hurt while using your exercise program. While Disclaimers are everywhere from exercise videos to that “your whole life will change and you’ll be so happy if you just take these pills that may also cause death” commercial, Disclaimers are also an integral part of reducing your exposure through your website or application. Disclaimers are relevant to you if you do any of the following:
- Advertise third party products or services. A Disclaimer will help you protect yourself if a user clicks on the third-party advertisement and gets a virus or is somehow injured by the product or service.
- Sell or display health products. A Disclaimer will help you protect yourself in this case if the health products do not work as they should, do not deliver the results that were expected or if the user gets injured by the health products.
- Participate in an affiliate program. An affiliate program is a program whereby you list a particular link on your website and if the user clicks on that link or purchases the products that the link displays, you receive money from the manufacturer of that product. A Disclaimer will help you comply with the manufacturer’s terms and conditions if they require that you display a Disclaimer and will help you keep your user’s trust.
- Provide health and fitness advice. A Disclaimer will protect you in case the user gets injured after following your health and fitness advice, much like the beginning of those exercise videos that you will watch in January of next year.
- Provide information that could be seen by others as legal advice. A Disclaimer will protect you here, by stating that there is no attorney-client relationship here and that this advice is not legal advice, thus protecting you in case something goes wrong.
If you do any of the above, a Disclaimer will help protect you by reducing your liability in case something goes wrong. As you can imagine, the damages from someone getting injured from exercising can be costly, thus a Disclaimer will also help you save a lot of money in the long run.
End User License Agreement (EULA)
An End User License Agreement (EULA) is a legal contract between a software application owner and the user. The user usually has to click “I accept” and only then is allowed to use the applications because the user has agreed to comply with the restrictions in the EULA. Restrictions in the EULA may include things such as not copying the code or attempting the reverse engineer it, among other things.
Other things you can do to protect yourself and your business:
- Register your business as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), which helps protects your personal assets, should your business ever be sued. Or incorporate your business. Consult your attorney if you’re not sure which entity you should choose.
- Have and USE a contract with your clients that spell out the expectations of working with each other, the details of the project or services, payments and consequences when expectations are not met. Have an attorney look over your contract to make sure that it is legally binding and will hold up in court, should you ever need it to.
- Keep your business and personal finances separate. This is important to the IRS, so it needs to be important to you.
- Keep good records of all your business expenses, including mileage. If you don’t know what expenses are allowed, consult with a tax professional.
- Use a tax professional to prepare your taxes. Tax laws change every year and they can be very confusing. If you ever get audited, you will want to have someone very skilled in your corner. Hiring a tax professional is money well-spent, in my opinion.