First of all, let us just say, we’re not lawyers. If you do want to make sure that you are absolutely totally and even more absolutely GDPR compliant, you need to employ a lawyer.
About us
DigitalJen is a Digital Media agency that helps small and medium size businesses (and that includes bloggers) get what they do, and why they do it, out ‘there’. We generally work in WordPress and between the team we have the best part of 20 years of combined blogging experience.
Onto the GDPR stuff
GDPR is a hot topic at the moment. With the thread of mega fines, different rules for different people and the fact that the good people in charge are still tweaking what they’re doing, there is no ‘here’s the answer’ document – especially in such a niche area like blogging.
We’ve worked on GDPR compliance with data specialists and have done a considerable amount of research as to how the new rules will affect different sectors and industries. In our voluntary work, we’ve also been looking at how GDPR affects what we do when handling personal data. Based on this, we’ve put our GDPR for Bloggers package together.
3 key points
- GDPR is here to stay – it will become British and European Law on May 25th It’s nothing new, the EU and UK government have been working on it since April 2016.
- GDPR is not something to been seen as a challenge to ‘get around’. It will be law and you need to comply.
- GDPR is a good thing. It does require us to think in a different way and it will require change. However, we all want our personal data to only be used by those who we’ve given permission to and we want it to be kept securely.
How we can help
We’ve already put the time in working out what we believe bloggers need to do to make sure they are working legally within the GDPR requirements. We’ve also applied what we hope is a hefty dose of practicality and common sense so that you, as a blogger, can see both sides of what’s going on.
We’ve created 3 packages that you can purchase so that we can do the GDPR work for you and you can get on with doing what you enjoy doing. These are for blogs on WordPress, self hosted websites – we’re happy to discuss how we can help if you use another platform. You can purchase any of these audits via our shop
The GDPR Audit Service – £100
This is basis of everything we’ll do. Once you’ve purchased this service, we’ll send you a questionnaire asking for information about your site, hosting and temporary access to your site.
Once we have access, we will look at your site, add relevant plugins, check your terms & conditions/privacy policy and then provide you with a list of things that need doing to make your blog GDPR compliant.
Once you’ve approved that list (we might ask you to choose a particular strategy), we’ll crack on and make those changes for you. Once those are done, we’ll leave you with a list of what you should and shouldn’t do with data in the future.
There may be elements that you will have to do yourself but we’ll be on hand to help if necessary.
The GDPR Audit and MailChimp Service – £140
In addition to the audit package, we’ll also set you up on MailChimp, help you move your subscribers onto it and show you how to set up an email campaign to ensure you have explicit opt-in for everyone you’re contacting – both now and in the future.
The GDPR Audit, MailChimp and Policy Service – £175
As part of the audit package, we’ll check through your terms & conditions/privacy policy and advise you on any changes you need to make. If we can edit those pages on your blog, we’ll do it for you – if not, we’ll ask you to update the document and re-upload it.
If you haven’t got a privacy policy or terms & conditions, this package includes both – adapted to your name and blog.
The EEEEEK bits
All the research we’ve done shows that, at the time of writing (May 2018), neither Disqus or Commentluv are making any effort to become GDPR compliant. They’re not European countries and therefore are under no obligation to do so. We know doing away with these could be a really big issue for bloggers but with fines of up to 10 million Euros for a first breach, the reward of a backlink becomes somewhat insignificant.
GDPR compliance is going to cost you money – if you are making any money from your blog (‘in kind’ or cash) you need to register with the Information Commissioner’s Office (www.ico.org.uk) – which at the moment costs £35. They have an assessment tool you can use to check if you need to register but if you are reviewing, taking sponsored posts, running competitions, advertising or anything like that, you do. It’s ‘enterprise’ and that needs registering.
You’ll also need an SSL certificate for your website. Not only will this ensure any data submitted by your site is encrypted, it will also help your Google ranking – they do like a site with the little green padlock. Depending on your host, these cost between £25 and £60/year.
It’s down to trust
People need to be able to trust you with their data. You need to be able to trust those you work with your data. You need to take the right measures to keep that data safe – it’s better for us all in the long term.
Ready? – book here