Litigator Saves Bloggers From Legal Destruction

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey, hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is Chris Guillebeau. Let's talk about some exciting topics here today, copyright, FCC, and sponsored products. Doesn't that sound thrilling?

Well, it's actually not thrilling or exciting at all, but it does matter. And in today's episode, where someone creates a second income without quitting their day job, an attorney knew that bloggers weren't following the rules, but it was painfully obvious that nobody else did. She sets out to correct that problem and create an asset for herself. Now at the end of this episode, I'll also include four of my own tips, which I'm calling, I'm not a lawyer, but here's what I've learned. These are tips to stay out of trouble, at least when you are doing stuff online and potentially offering something for sale.

So we're calling this litigator saves bloggers from legal destruction. Here is a quick thank you to our sponsor. By the way, they are our sponsor. That's a disclosure. And then I'll tell you how she does it.

[Music]

Jackie Stoughton started her blog way back in 2012 as a creative outlet. Blogging was in its prime, WordPress was easy to use, and she needed a way to wind down after a long day at her job as a law firm litigator. She loved meeting other creative types over the internet, but the more she explored, the more she noticed an alarming trend. Many of her friends blogs were illegal, like actually breaking the law illegal. Few of them had a terms and conditions page.

Most said nothing whatsoever about privacy. And basically no one was following trademark or copyright laws. But the worst part was sponsored content. She never saw disclaimers about being paid or given free gear in exchange for a review. Sure, Jackie knew some mysterious man from the government wasn't gonna track down all these small time bloggers and put them in jail for not following the law to a tee.

But that didn't mean these bloggers were deliberately trying to skirt the rules. A lot of them wanted to be in full compliance. They hoped that their blog would become a business. And to do that, they had to ensure that they were doing whatever they could to follow the laws. Understanding these laws was Jackie's field of expertise, but she hesitated in turning it into a side hustle.

Did she really want to start writing about legal matters on the blog she used for her creative outlet? After going back and forth, she finally decided that the opportunity was just too good. She had exactly what those bloggers needed, the ability to interpret and understand the legalese of copyright law. So she started writing more and more about the legal side of blogging. And as could be expected, when you provide something that's much needed, but hard to find, readers began to show up.

There wasn't much strategy in that first year. She wrote helpful content, readers showed up, and that was that. She made a small amount of money from Google Ads. It was simple and easy, but Jackie knew that if she really wanted to grow the blog into a profitable, sustainable business, she'd have to do more than that. That's when she participated in a webinar that changed the way she viewed her blog.

The webinar was about creating digital products and the advantage of being a creator over just running ads. She ended up buying the course featured at the end of the video, and it turned out to be a great investment. Jackie was convinced. She wanted to try her hand at creating her own products. That winter, she wrote and launched the blogger's handbook for keeping it legal, offering it for $35.

She didn't have a ton of sales right away, but the idea was validated. Those long hours she spent writing an ebook were slowly turning into money. A couple of months later, Jackie launched her first course, Blog While You 9 to 5, and began making more money. A couple of months after that, she had her best month yet, $600, and often pre-sales of her next course, Blog and Be Legal. The strategic planning was literally paying off.

The key to those early sales was webinars. Jackie hated doing webinars at first. It felt weird selling to strangers on camera, but she pushed through the awkwardness to find her groove. They seemed to be working, so she did more and more webinars, and then more still. But then she realized something important.

Attendees were commenting that they were getting the same information over and over again, and they also weren't buying her courses as much. She realized she could only give away so much free content before it was time to convert viewers to buyers. So it was important to have fewer, better free resources than a whole bunch of mediocre ones. This meant she slowed down her creation of free resources and started launching more products. She also stopped hosting so many webinars, focused on the highest converting ones, and began optimizing her email marketing.

These changes helped to increase her side income while allowing her to work less. She expects to profit around $10,000 in 2018 and hopes to keep growing next year. She's also thrilled to be expecting her first child. She's working hard to streamline the blog so that it can run on autopilot for the first half of 2019. She wants to be able to rest and enjoy time with her baby, and she's grateful she's taken the time to create a product-based business.

If all goes well, this side business will continue to earn extra income while she's enjoying maternity leave from her job. [Music]

All right, as promised, Chris Gillibow's super quick, non-legal tips to stay out of trouble, which of course is proceeded with the disclaimer that I'm not an attorney and I'm not offering you any legal advice. So a lot of this is pretty simple. It is common sense. If you do these things, you're gonna greatly reduce your risk of ever getting into trouble, which of course is the whole point.

Number one, don't steal from people, okay? So don't steal people's blog posts and then republish them under your name. That has happened to me many times. More than once, I have followed up with someone and said, "Hey, actually, you know, this post that you just published under your name, I actually wrote it myself." And sometimes, believe it or not, people will say, "Oh, I had no idea that wasn't okay." Well, guess what? It's not okay.

Don't steal from people and stealing includes using other people's images. Now, this is something that a lot of people do. It's really common. But remember that a lot of photography is under copyright. You can't just go and take any images and then use them in your blog post or use them on your website or for some other commercial purpose.

Now, there is a great alternative if you're looking for images for blog posts or even sometimes for commercial content. For my posts, I used to go to Flickr. Flickr.com, F-L-I-C-K-R. And I would do an advanced search using the Creative Commons option checked. And then I would search for my images and there would be thousands of options.

And under that license, anybody can use those images. Now, there are some various restrictions on how you can use them and so on, but that's the point. Go to Flickr, search for Creative Commons. And now, more commonly, I'm using a resource called Unsplash. So Unsplash.com, U-N-S-P-L-A-S-H.com.

This is a site with completely free high-res photography that photographers from all over the world are contributing to. You can download those images and use them yourself. And technically speaking, you don't even have to credit the photographer. Although ethically, I think it's a good idea to do that. The photographer's name is always listed there.

So whenever I use an image from Unsplash, I will include an image credit to the original photographer. But that's a great resource to look at when you are searching for free images. Next, if someone gives you something and you write about it, make that clear. This is especially important in the world of travel and fashion. There are still a lot of travel bloggers out there and fashion bloggers who are not clearly disclosing that the trips they're going on or the clothes they were writing about were actually provided by the airline or the hotel or the travel board or the fashion brand or whatever it is.

And when you are honest with your readers or your listeners or however people are engaging with your content, I don't think they're gonna thank less of you for just acknowledging the relationship. I think they will think less of you if you don't acknowledge the relationship and then later they figure it out. So if someone gives you something and you write about it or otherwise endorse it in some fashion, make that clear. And last but not least, if you make money from your blog somehow, which is totally fine. We talk about that in all kinds of different ways through side hustle school.

But if you do that, if you make money from your blog somehow, let people know how. It shouldn't be a mystery how you get paid for your side hustle. So if you have a blog that's making money or a website or a podcast or whatever, just make it clear, don't try to hide it. And that will make life so much easier in many situations. It won't resolve everything.

That's why I'm not an attorney, et cetera. But this can take care of a lot of frustrations and hassles and potential pitfalls. All right, I hope that is helpful. I'm gonna link up those resources and Jackie's resources and anything else I mentioned in the episode on our show notes page. That page is sidehustleschool.com/658, episode 658.

As always, inspiration is good but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Thank you for listening today. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]