The Business Protector

I talked about Stan Craigie and his GIMP training videos in my last blog post. Today I want to talk about the terms of service on your website, your privacy policy, and whether they truly reflect your concern for your customers. And then I’ll tie the two together — I promise!

Are your privacy policy and terms of service driving away customers? In some cases, they are, especially if I visit your site. I can name at least two instances off the top of my head where I’ve literally had my credit card pulled out of my wallet and was ready to purchase — but stopped when I read what those marketers wanted to do with my personal data. I can also name two other instances (including one that involves Mr. Craigie) where the website owner positively responded by changing the terms to better protect my data, which led to a sale (and in the case of Mr. Craigie, lots of sales — if a few of you reading this will purchase his inexpensive graphics training course).

First off, if you are going to have a website — be it commercial or personal — you need to have a standard set of policies. There are many free ones out there for the budget conscious among us, but I recommend that you invest a few dollars to get a good set. Check out my legal page to read my terms, then follow the link at the bottom of that page to see the solution that I purchased. I think that it represents a good value.

Next: it’s easy to get carried away and to write your terms so that they protect you, and only you. There’s at least one person on the Internet (who is, or was at one time, a lawyer), who seems to have some excellent products — but his terms of service are so one-sided that I won’t purchase any of his products. And the sad thing is that he must be selling a solution so that others can basically use the same terms because I see them popping up on other web sites. I’m certain that they would say, “Hey, don’t worry about it, it’s there ‘just in case’ and I’m sure I won’t have a problem with you” — but am I supposed to give up every single legal right I have — plus $47? — just to get your product? And you can bet your donkey that if a problem does arise, they’ll whip out those terms and use them to severely cut down any claim that I want to make.

Once burned, twice careful. Sorry, but those terms show a lack of consideration for me, your potential customer, so I’m not buying.

And what about privacy policies? I learned the hard way to read them when I started getting spammed by hundreds of wanna-be marketers. Turns out that one product I purchased gave the product and website owner my implied consent to sell my contact details to whomever he wanted to sell them to. I’ve even met this person face to face at a conference; he’s a really nice and smart guy, but he routinely sells your contact information as often as he can.

Of course, the flip side of this is that people who purchase and use his lists get spam complaints, and since they don’t have proof of opt-in, they get to deal with the complaints (and CAN-SPAM allows for fines of up to $11,000 PER COMPLAINT). Think Mr. Nice Guy, But I’m Going To Sell Your Email Address To Anybody and Everybody Marketer is going to help them get out of that pickle? I doubt it. So stay away from those lists unless you have some way of confirming their opt-in status first.

So my advice is this: Read those terms of service and privacy policies before you pull out your credit card and hit the “Order” link. In fact, read the things as soon as you first visit a website (my terms state that simply using my website implies consent to the terms). And if you don’t like the terms, contact the person (unless they are one of these people that says that they can use anything you send to them in any manner they want to, in which case I would not contact them. Do you want your complaint letter posted on Page 1 of their blog?) and simply tell them that you have concerns with their policies and that those concerns are preventing you from purchasing. Some people will listen (and I’ll tell you about two of them in a moment).

Even better: Read the terms on your websites. Is this how you would want to be treated if you were a customer? If not, change them. Now. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a good rule to follow. Strike a balance between leaving yourself wide open and demanding that web site visitors give up every right they possess just to read your blog.

And now, about those two marketers who listened: As I already (unintentionally) mentioned, the first is Stan Craigie. He made some changes to his policies to make them a bit fairer. As a result, I not only purchased his course, I also promote it.

The other is Dr. Andy Williams, the content site guru and all-around helpful guy. I can’t say enough about his graceful response when I, as an ignoramus, posted complaints about his policies on a forum (instead of contacting him directly). He changed his policies and gained a customer (and I learned a lesson that I’ll try not to forget). I’m glad to see this because his materials really do rock (and if you haven’t already, I recommend his free newsletter; just click on his name to learn how to sign up. Just don’t forget to READ the darn thing when it arrives, OK?).

So here are some takeaways for you:

* Read your own terms of service and your privacy policy. If you would not want to be treated that way on a website, consider changing them.

* Your terms may be driving away customers.

* Read the terms and privacy policy before using a website or purchasing something from it.

* Don’t use a list of emails given to you by somebody else unless you really know what you are doing.

And by all means, if my policies and terms give you heartburn, contact me and tell me about it. I will listen to what you have to say.

If you have some type of paid membership site that requires a login (even if it is a one-time purchase), I recommend that you submit your site for blocking at BugMeNot.com.

ButMeNot is a web site where people can post and access userids and passwords for sites that require logins. The main purpose is to avoid having to register for free sites so that you don’t get signed up for mailing lists and have your contact details sold to others. As a marketer, I have mixed feelings about it, of course.

I have my own mailing list for most of my blogs, and I don’t re-sell any leads, nor do I bombard your Inbox with email promoting every single product to be launched (and then some). I want you to sign up for my mailing list, and once you do that, I try to respect the permission you gave me by not abusing it. But given the abuse (and we are not discussing legalities here — just “what is right” in my eyes) that some marketers like to do with contact information — like sell it under the guise of “lead generation” — I don’t blame people for not wanting to surrender their contact info.

So what is the alternative? Read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy of every website that you want to use (actually, you should do this, but people get in a hurry, get lazy, etc.)? Create a throw-away email account for every site you want to sign up for? Give false information?

Or use BugMeNot?

No, I can’t really blame people for using them. It’s a pain to have to register for each site I want to view, read their Terms and Policies, and decide if I want to give them the requested info. I’ve been tempted to use it myself on a few occasions.

On the other hand, if your login system is designed to protect a paid product, BugMeNot.com has a page where you can request to be excluded from their database. I recommend that Internet marketers and home business people take advantage of this opt-out mechanism.

If your site doesn’t sell anything and you’re not technically eligible to request a block, there’s a simple solution: Sell Something. Simply offer some type of upsell on the first page when members log in. Even if nobody buys it, you are still protecting paid content, right (and a good upsell offer — as long as it is relevant and delivers good value — will convert quite well)? Most membership site scripts have some type of option for “premium content” that make it quite easy to set this up.

They also do not allow sites that have age access verification under COPPA. I guess you have to be using active verification; it’s not enough to just say “nobody under the age of 18 can use this site”. So if you wanted to use some type of age verification system, that would work, too (but would probably cost more money).

Personally, I think that BugMeNot should allow any site to request a block, and since the Terms at many sites clearly state that passwords and userids cannot be shared, I have to wonder if they are actually facilitating the violation of these terms. And if this is the case, do sites whose users posts login details have any legal recourse against BugMeNot, or can BugMeNot pass the blame back to their users? Interesting questions!

So I recommend that you actually sell something on any site that requires a login, then head on over to BugMeNot and fill out their block request. I’d also check to see if your site has any login details listed; if there are, then I’d ban that user in accordance with your site’s Terms of Service.
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P.S. — They host their service at NearlyFreeSpeech.net and have private registration, which makes tracing down the real owners difficult to do, short of some type of legal summons (I know that they are not American because of the way they spell “unauthorised” in their Terms). And their terms do not state where legal action has to be brought… And perhaps it’s time to add a statement that your registered users are not allowed to post their login details on sites like BugMeNot (but talk to a lawyer for the specific wording — don’t ask me!).