Here are 10 lessons in setting your policies of how you are going to operate your business blog.
1. Provide Web addresses linked from the website domain, not addresses from free webmail services such as Hotmail and Gmail.
2. Don’t lie to make money. The most common way is to write a glowing report about a product or service to earn affiliate revenues. It is very short-sighted to lie to visitors to sell them rubbish. They’ll won’t come back or, worse still, they’ll actively condemn your site on forums and blogs. Or don’t say it’s FREE to sign-up, then it turns out they have to buy blog posts or buy your products or services when they sign-up for your newsletter.
3. Think carefully about reciprocal links. If your site is about organic food and you have links to Party Poker, people are going to question your integrity. Just because you write about a local company and you get someone asking to reciprocate links to a pool table store, doesn’t mean you should do it.
4. Think carefully about the advertising you display on your site. Ensure that they are relevant to your subject and audience. This is true especially for your companies that you are an affiliate with. A friend of mine always likes google ad words, thinking in brings in traffic to her blog, really? What I found it brings you traffic just not the kind you want or the people you would want to serve.
5. Be explicit when you are being paid to endorse a product or service. An advertorial is fine as long as it is transparent. Paid-to-post is corrupting the Web and will experience a user backlash. Now the laws state that you need a policy or statement that you do get paid from your ads and affiliate products.
6. Write and publish your privacy policy. Be clear about what you will and will not do with any personal data you collect. State that you adhere to all data protection laws. Make it easy to read and don’t use legal gobblygook.
7. Write and publish a security policy. State what measures you take to ensure that all transactions are secure. For example the new UK laws will be in effect May 25, 2018.
8. Ensure that you have a security and privacy policy which is linked from the footer on every page. Make the link more prominent on all the order pages.
9. Clearly publish your guarantee. State it clearly. If you are selling a product do you offer a guarantee on what you sell?
10. Clearly state your refund and returns policy. Can people return what they buy from you?
