Legal issues with affiliate marketing?
Hi! I'm based in Canada and married to a retired criminal lawyer who is blessed with a fertile imagination and cursed with the worry gene. We argue a lot about me starting an affiliate marketing business, with the main issues being
1. Fear of voiding our house insurance by having a home based virtual business and
2. Fear of being sued over some aspect of product liability and not having insurance to pay for a defense.
We have visited a lawyer with some expertise in online gaming and he said the risks are very low (also that nobody makes money with affiliate marketing), but that doesn't seem to be enough to resolve the issues.
Does anyone know of any cases or articles that address these issues, pro or con?
I know that at least some part of the fear is paranoia, but can concede that there is a small amount of actual risk here.
Any help answering these questions would be very much appreciated.
Thanks so much!
Kathee
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I'm not a lawyer nor am I anywhere near qualified to be giving out legal advice, but here goes nothing...
Your first worry can be easily avoided by simply buying some rather inexpensive home-based business insurance. However, I don't believe that running a website poses any risk of voiding your current home insurance. Simply put, unless you're running a server farm from your garage I really don't think this is a worry. That being said, this is definitely something you should check with an experienced insurance agent about, rather than us..
Your second worry can be avoided by buying Business Liability Insurance - I think. However, it's not necessary and the chance of you being sued as an affiliate (as long as you're not blatantly lying in reviews or posting libel) is slim to none, much less than a 1% chance if I had to guess.
Thanks for the encouraging words. I know that's all probably exactly right, but try to convince a worrywart with too much imagination!!!! Hard!
This is a very stupid question, but do you know whether regular insurance agents deal in business liability insurance? Would I have to find a specialized agency for that?
Thanks so much.
No problem!
I'm not entirely certain; however, I am certain that there would either be a qualified agent working in the insurance agency you inquire at, or they would be able to direct you to one at the very least.
You are right - there are agents in my area who deal in this. Thanks again for taking time to answer my questions :)
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For anyone who's facing the same issues (or just curious), here's what we found out: our home is insured by Westland Insurance company. Since I have no inventory and no employees or clients on site, all I needed was their permission to have a business in the home, which they readily issued. If a liability issue should arise, our homeowner's policy wouldn't cover it so they strongly recommended basic commercial liability insurance. There's a minimum premium for that, which runs about $1,000 per year. And many "regular" insurance agents do offer that.