I'm signed up and following a Facebook group called, "Blogging Like We Mean It" and I am learning that I really really need to have an email list where people can subscribe and I capture emails for marketing purposes.
Now, I am not a spammer so don't worry, I have no plans on starting any email campaigns that just add more toxic email to your inbox. If anything, I'm just getting started myself on understanding this whole blogging thing and setting up a marketable website.
To not beat around the bush, this website is my experience in building a blog that makes money for my husband and I. Right now, today, I'm not making a single dime and if you are an aspiring blogger also, well, pull up a chair and feel free to share your discoveries with me and I'll share with you. Also, send me your link and I'll take a look at your site. If your not a scammer (of which I get plenty of those making comments on my site) then I'll share with you and even link to your page.
So today, I am learning about the legal stuff. One of the things I have learned is if you do not have a privacy policy you can forget about signing up as an affiliate with anybody and this GDPR thing, is absolutely necessary even if you do not live in Europe so you must have a proper GDPR compliant statement.
I found a website that offers education about being legally compliant called Freelance and Marketing there are not only legal resources but additional information about developing a blog. I plan on spending time on the site learning.
Right now I'm on a mission to get a privacy statement, a GDPR compliant statement, and my affiliate disclosure rewritten. Then after that email will be next.
Legal Pages
This is non-negotiable. You need legal pages on your blog.
A privacy policy, terms of use, cookies policy are absolutely necessary.
You can download a free plugin, like Legal Pages to generate these for you.
Or, you can pay to have them created for you by a lawyer. Once your blog grows and becomes more successful, you definitely want to invest some money into these.
Hopefully it never comes down to it, but in the event that you’re ever taken to court over something on your blog, you want your ducks in a row.
When you’re ready to purchase legal pages for your blog, I highly recommend this legal bundle from A Self Guru.
FTC Disclosure
If you’re planning to use affiliate links to make money with your blog, you absolutely must have this disclosure somewhere on your blog.
You have to disclose to your readers that you’re using affiliate links, and they need to be able to easily access the full disclosure page. This plugin can help you with that!