Very few people enjoy writing the privacy policy and the terms and conditions of any website, it seems like a thankless task because nobody really likes talking about legal issues unless they’re a lawyer and getting paid by the hour, and very few people will actually bother to read your privacy policy and terms and conditions.

So if nobody is going to read it, then why should you create one? People may not read it, but many will check for the existence of one. People know that many people won’t bother to create one, and so it can be seen as a measure of the professionalism of your site.

What is a privacy policy?

A privacy policy details how your company will collect, use and store any personal information from your customers. People are very protective over their personal information; especially these days and so will need some convincing that you are not going to do anything bad with it. Make sure that your customer is aware that you won’t be giving this private data to any other companies; you will use it only for your own business purposes and take very good care of it. You don’t need to make any major promises, but you do need to use this to reassure visitors.

What are the Terms and Conditions?

These are where you tell your visitors about the general rules which affect your site; these should be related to management and financial rules. This lets the buyers know about their rights and responsibilities and can also reassure visitors that you are a trustworthy company.

Both of these documents are official documents which are designed to reassure the visitor of your site. It’s important to carefully look at examples of privacy policy’s and terms and conditions from your country as laws can change depending on your country.

How can you use the privacy policy to your advantage?

You should show your visitors what personal information you will collect and show the reasons why you need this information. Don’t request information that you don’t need, otherwise this will make people every suspicious and also put them off completing the whole form.

Also tell your visitors how this information will be stored and how you will use it. Try to reassure visitors that you won’t abuse their information.

How you can protect this information – Show how this information is protected from hackers and other scammers.

Tell them who you might disclose this information to; you should be upfront about this. You need to allow the visitor to edit and delete the information easily as this will improve credibility of your site. If there are any policy changes then you should notify users, tell them how you will tell them about these policy changes.

You should also give contact details for anyone who wants to ask questions about their privacy. Make sure that they are able to get answers to their questions easily to make sure they are reassured.

Where should you put these pages?

Most webmasters generally put these pages at the bottom of a website, because you don’t want you visitor reading your privacy policy before reading your salescopy.

Business Week, National Geographic, and your local gym all use the same business model. It’s a subscription-based model that allows rapid growth and expansion. And you can tap into this model using the power of the internet.

The concept is simple. You charge customers a monthly fee for access to a membership website. Each month, you update
the content so your subscribers have something new to experience and remain subscribed.

Even low-end subscription based membership websites can generate quite a respectable income very quickly. Websites
that only charge $10 a month can quickly add several thousand dollars to the webmaster’s bottom line. 200 members
is an extra $2,000 a month. For the average person, that’s a nice second income.

At the other end of the scale are membership websites that charge $50, $100, or $500 a month and have thousands of
members. It doesn’t take long before financial stability turns into a dream lifestyle for the website owner.

But it’s not all a bowl of cherries. Owning a membership website also involves some time and money. You need to
provide new content each month so your members keep their membership. Depending on the type of website you own, this could take you one day a month, one week a month or the whole month.

And buying a membership website can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Your other option is to build it yourself. If
you choose the D-I-Y method it will take you hundreds of hours and lots of blood, sweat and tears.

So look before you leap into the membership website arena. There is a lot of money to be made with this business model,
but you need to consider your time constraints and financial considerations too.

Bruno Auger

Tags: money, membership website, membership, customers, subscription-based model