In this instructional video, online business attorney Brittany Ratelle walks creators, coaches, and digital sellers through six essential legal steps to secure and legitimize a digital product business. She begins by emphasizing the need to own the intellectual property rights to the product, recommending copyright assignments or contractor agreements. She then advises on website compliance, urging owners of self‑hosted sites to display a full legal footer (privacy policy, terms, copyright notice, disclosures). The third step covers embedding clear licensing terms and a mandatory acceptance checkbox at checkout, or displaying licensing info in product listings. The fourth step explains why forming a legal entity (LLC, corporation) separates personal and business assets. The fifth step introduces a “business marriage prenup” – an operating agreement that defines ownership, decision‑making, exit plans, and protects the company’s IP and assets. The final step focuses on proper contracts with team members, including work‑for‑hire clauses, confidentiality, proper classification of employees vs contractors, and additional agreements such as event waivers, model releases, affiliate agreements, and testimonial releases. Throughout, Ratelle stresses that the video is informational, not legal advice, and promotes her legal template bundles for each document type.
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Do you sell digital products? Maybe you have an online course or a membership program, or maybe you sell digital files or templates. You might have been overwhelmed and maybe confused with what exactly are you supposed to do to get that type of business legally legit and protected. I'm online business attorney Brittany Ratelle, and today in this video, we're going to walk through exactly what you need to do to protect your online digital product business. Whether you are a teacher, creator, coach, or one of the other millions of other types of derivations, we're going to make sure that you have all the information you need to get everything secure and confidence that you can move forward. As always, while I'm an attorney, I'm not your attorney, and this is not official legal advice. This is just for informational purposes only. So if you have any questions about any of the things I talk about today or in any of my other videos, make sure you check with someone who practices law in your jurisdiction. Let's get into it. Tip number 1, we want to make sure that we have the proper rights to whatever it is that you're selling. You could probably guess that if you're selling a digital product, the most important thing to lock down is your digital product. You're putting all of your eggs in this basket, and because this is your source of revenue, we wanna make sure that we've done our homework and asked ourselves where this information came from, who created it, who edited it or helped film it or write it, and to make sure that any of those people that were involved in that process have properly signed away their rights so that you can turn around and then sell that to other people. As you are putting together your digital product or products, check to see if there's anyone else who's helped you in your business. Have them sign a copyright assignment form, link is in the description, or that you've gotten them to sign something like an independent contractor agreement. Or some other type of client service agreement that has transferred the intellectual property rights to you. Although it may seem weird, technically, even if you paid someone to help with this, if you don't have anything in writing, the rights actually belong to whoever it is that created it. Number 2, we're going to want to make sure we get your naked website covered and make sure that your website footer is compliant. Now, if you're only selling on an online marketplace like Etsy or TPT, this is not going to apply to you. However, if you're selling on your own website, regardless of the type of website platform, we got to make that we have the right documents in the website footer. I'm sure you've seen those on websites. You might even be annoyed by some of those cookie notices. Have you been confused or wondering what exactly you are supposed to have in your website? I've got your solution. Make sure you check out my website legal bundle. It's my bestselling product that has everything you need to get legally legit for your website footer. It's got your privacy policy, terms and conditions, your copyright statement, and any necessary disclaimers or disclosures in a swipe file that you can put right on your website. You wanna make sure that you've put proper boundaries on your website. It's your home base, and we wanna make sure anyone who comes over to your clubhouse is protected and knows the rules. Number 3, we're gonna set up proper boundaries or specific terms and conditions that govern the use and license of your digital product. This means that if we have the option, we definitely wanna make sure that people have to check a box during checkout and that those terms and conditions that they're checking the box to are actually linked to something real that protects you. We wanna make sure that there's language that specifies what people can do and not do with your digital products, what kind of license they they have, if they can print it commercially or not, if they can distribute it or make it available online, or if there's any other rules about using your content. If you're selling on a marketplace, it's likely that any purchases will be governed by the platform's terms and conditions. However, I have a workaround for this, and that's you should include in your product photos and in your product descriptions licensing terms so that people know before they purchase. Otherwise, if people don't agree to those terms beforehand, it's going to be really difficult for you to enforce those terms on the back end. Number 4, you want to incorporate or register your business entity with your state. If you're operating as a sole proprietorship, that's like the default status. It means that you actually don't have any legal asset protection between your personal money and your business money. We want to change that and make sure we have a solid business boundary between those two and that you can protect just in case there's any kind of litigation wave that tries to knock over all your buckets. So make sure that you've taken the steps to register your business with your state and check out some of our other videos that we have to learn exactly how you can do that. Next, number 5, we're going to want to sign that business marriage prenup. Business marriage prenups or operating agreements are the agreement that runs the back of your business. Some states require them and some banks require them to set up a business bank account. They become critical if you have a business partnership because it will outline your equity contributions, how you're going to make decisions, if there's any spending limits. It should outline some sort of exit plan and make sure that all of that cool intellectual property, all those digital products that you're working on are being put into the company pot and that someone's not allowed to take those with them, including any social media handles and accounts that you're building or any customer lists or email lists. Those are assets that have an actual dollar value. You wanna make sure those are growing and being invested inside the company. If someone wants to leave, what do they get to take with them? And how are you going to set up that procedure in a way that doesn't turn into an ugly business divorce? Number 6, you're gonna wanna set up proper boundaries with team members. So whether you have independent contractors or W-2 employees, both should be covered by some sort of written agreement. And depending on what they're doing in your business, you wanna make sure that you're not misusing classifying one set for the other. We wanna make sure that we have these relationships set up and safeguarded, that you're protecting your confidential business information, that you have work for hire and intellectual property agreement language, and that you have language about how they're gonna be paid. Some other things that you might need depending on your business are an event waiver or release. If you're having some sort of in-person event, maybe you're hosting a retreat, you wanna make sure you have a liability waiver and release. If you are using in your marketing any images or photos or videos of other people, Make sure you have a model release or a media release to make sure that you have permission to use their name, image, and likeness for your business purposes. If you run an affiliate program, make sure that you have an affiliate agreement so that when people sign up to be affiliates, there's some rules about how they can market and use your brand name and carry on your brand imagery. You wanna make sure that they're doing things in a non-scammy way. They're not participating in black hat marketing tactics. You wanna make sure they can't set up a competing domain or pay for traffic that will divert away from your website and your own efforts. Also, you wanna make sure if you're using testimonials in your business or you're doing legal promotions or working in influencer marketing, that you have the right agreements to protect all those relationships. You will find all of these contracts and more in my legal template shop called Creative Contracts. Check out the link in the description below. If you have any questions about how to protect your digital product business, make sure you put 'em in the comments. Thanks so much for being here. I'm online attorney Brittany Ratelle. Make sure you like and subscribe to this channel so you don't miss out on my great videos dropping every week on how to get your online business legally legit and protected.
