Ultimate Guide to Your Own Stan Terms and Conditions | 5 Must-Haves to Protect Your Money and Digital Products
Want to know what you need in your Stan terms and conditions? I’m telling you exactly what you need in your T&C to protect your digital products and money.
Stan is a great platform to sell your digital products, but if you’re anything like me, you want to ensure your digital products are protected from copycats, and you will keep all the money you earn. As a lawyer myself who sells digital product terms and conditions for online shop owners, including Stan Store owners like you, I am telling you exactly what you need in your Stan terms and conditions and how to implement them.
You will learn about the must-haves for your Stan terms and conditions, and I’ve included a step-by-step guide on how to implement them starting at your Stan login (because there’s no Stan phone number to help you).
After learning about all the must-haves you need for your Stan terms and conditions, your digital products and cash will be fully protected from copycats and money vultures!
This post is all about the exact terms you need in your Stan terms and conditions to protect your hard-earned cash, copyrights, and business (and how to implement them).
Ultimate Stan Terms and Conditions
Standard terms to protect your digital products
Does Stan not already have terms and conditions?
Stan already has a great set of terms and conditions for the use of the Stan website and a decent privacy policy. So, you do not necessarily have to set up the terms of use or a privacy policy like you would have to with your own website.
By the way, if you also have your own website, I highly recommend reading this blog post on What Legal Pages Should a Website Have | 7 Must-Haves. You can get your complete Legal Website Bundle (including the essential legal page every self-hosted website must have) on this page of my contract shop.
However, Stan does not have terms and conditions and disclaimers that sufficiently cover your digital products. Those are your terms that you need to add. Now, let’s get granular, and let me explain which terms and conditions you need to add to your Stan Store.
1. Ownership of intellectual property rights and license to use
First and foremost, your customers must understand that, even though they paid for your digital product, what they’re really purchasing is the right to use your digital product, i.e. a license to your intellectual property. You remain the owner of the digital product and its contents.
Thus, the following must be clearly stated in your Stan terms and conditions:
You are and remain the owner of the digital products they purchase in your Stan Store and all intellectual property rights attached to them.
Your customer solely receives a license to the digital products they purchase.
That license is non-exclusive, limited, non-transferable, and non-sublicensable.
2. How your digital products may (not) be used
So, you are giving your customer the right to use the digital products they purchase in your Stan Store. But how may they use your digital product?
May your customer publish your eBook for free on their own website for everyone to read?
May your customer resell (the rights to) your graphic design?
May your customer use your workbook for their own clients they are coaching?
May your customer use the photos and videos you sell in your Stan Store for advertising purposes for their own business?
You probably don’t want any of that. So, you must make clear what your customers may and may not do with your digital products.
Generally, you will allow personal, non-commercial, information and educational use of your digital products. That is something that should be explicitly stated in your Stan terms and conditions, so it’s clear to your customers how they may use your products.
But you also want to make explicitly clear that your customer may not:
share, copy, modify, or reproduce your digital products or
create any derivative works of your digital products.
However, you may be selling something that your customer does need to edit and modify, like a workbook, email templates, or, like in my case, contract templates. In that case, your Stan terms and conditions should also contain a qualifier explaining that edits, modification, copying, etc., are not allowed, provided that the customer is allowed to edit and modify your digital products for personal use, including for use within their business, if applicable. For example, if you are selling email templates to be used to pitch their services to prospective clients, then they are using them for their own business. In such a case, you also want to clarify that such modifications may not lead to the unauthorised distribution or resale of your digital products.
Now, it’s super clear to your customers what they may and, more importantly, what they may not do with your digital products.
3. Your right to terminate the license
So now it is clear to your customers how they may not use your digital products. But what if your customer does not obey your rules?
Well, since you have given your customer a limited (as in limited use of your) license, your customer would be infringing on your intellectual property rights if they did not use your digital products in accordance with your license. And that gives you a legal basis to terminate their use of your digital products without having to reimburse them because they breached (1) your Stan terms and conditions and (2) your intellectual property rights.
Therefore, your Stan terms and conditions should explicitly state:
your right to terminate the license,
in which case your customer must immediately stop using your digital products, and
in which case your customer will not have any right to reimbursements or refunds.
That’s how you protect your digital products with the proper Stan terms and conditions.
4. Refund policy
Speaking of refunds, your Stan terms and conditions must also include a refund policy.
Given the nature of digital products, it’s not something that your customer can return., like a physical product. They may say they won’t use it, but you can’t know whether that’s true.
However, you may still want to provide a satisfaction guarantee. That is up to you. Therefore, my standard terms and conditions template offers you the option to choose whether you’ll give them a refund if they ask for it within a certain number of days and what percentage of their money they get refunded; is it 100% or maybe 50%?
But this must be clearly stated in your Stan terms and conditions, so your customer knows exactly:
if they can get a refund, and
if so, under what conditions.
5. Disclaimers
The next thing that is absolutely crucial to have in your Stan terms and conditions, and this is where the Stan Store really falls short, is all the necessary disclaimers. What disclaimers are necessary? Here are a couple of main examples:
Your digital products are provided as is and as available.
A specification of the format of your digital products and how they are made available, and a disclaimer that your customer is responsible for having the proper hardware and software to use your digital products.
Your digital products are for informational and educational purposes only and may not be construed as professional advice.
You are not responsible for their reliance on your digital products.
You are not responsible for the outcomes, results, and decisions your customers make when using your digital products.
I could go deeper into these disclaimers, but this is just a quick overview of the most important terms you need in your Stan terms and conditions. There’s way more, like limitations of liability and indemnity.
I will go into more depth on what any standard terms and conditions template for digital products must have in this blog post on the 10 Must-Haves for All Terms and Conditions for Digital Products. So, if you want to learn more, check out this blog post!
Want a Stan Store terms and conditions template?
Do you want to ensure you have all the necessary Stan terms and conditions you need to protect your digital products and money?
I have the ultimate Stan Store terms and conditions template! I sell a standard terms and conditions template that contains alternative clauses specifically for use in a Stan Store. If you later decide to host your own website and sell digital products on your own website, you can use this same template for your website!
Find out more about my terms and conditions for digital products on this page of my contract shop!
How to implement your T&C, starting at your Stan login
It is super easy to add your own Stan terms and conditions to your Stan Store.
Stan provides a step-by-step guide, starting at your Stan login on this page of Stan’s website.
Basically, all you have to do is copy and paste your Stan terms and conditions template, and you’re good to go!
Standard terms and conditions for 1:1 calls
Now, I know that most of you reading this blog will also sell one-on-one calls/virtual meetings in their Stan Store. For this, you can add a different set of terms and conditions, called a virtual meeting policy, to the scheduler you include in your Stan Store for your 1-on-1 calls.
I discuss everything you need in your virtual meeting policy in this blog post on The Best Virtual Meeting Policy to Protect Against Last-Minute Cancellations and Refund Requests.
This post was all about the most important clauses you need in your Stan terms and conditions to protect your money and digital products.
Want to learn more about ALL the must-haves you need in your stan terms and conditions for digital products? Then, you should read this blog post on the 10 Must-Haves for All Terms and Conditions for Digital Products.
More specifically, are you selling eBooks in your Stan Store? Then, you must read this blog post on the 11 Key Protections Your eBook Terms and Conditions Template Must Have.
Do you need a Stan Store terms and conditions template? Find out more about my standard terms and conditions template (that can be used for your own website AND a Stan Store on this page of my contract shop!
