By business type

Cookie Policy Generator for creators

Written for newsletters, affiliate links, sponsorships, comments and audience analytics.

Generate your cookie policy Read the cookie policy guide

Ad-funded publishing has the hardest cookie problem, because the tags that pay for the site are exactly the ones that need consent. The cookie policy has to describe that arrangement honestly, including the number of parties involved in real-time bidding.

Publishing looks like a low-data business until you list what actually runs: an email list with open and click tracking, affiliate links that pass identifiers to networks, ad or sponsorship tracking, comment systems storing IP addresses, and analytics on every page. Each is a distinct processing purpose.

Email is the centre of it. A newsletter list needs a documented consent basis, open and click tracking is itself processing that most subscribers do not expect, and platform features like lead magnets and referral programmes each add their own collection.

Disclosure obligations run alongside data protection. Affiliate and sponsorship relationships must be disclosed clearly and before the link under the FTC endorsement guides, the UK CAP Code and EU unfair commercial practices rules - and "clearly" has been interpreted strictly.

What a cookie policy for a creator, blogger or newsletter publisher has to cover

Advertising cookies and the ad network or exchange behind them
Analytics and audience measurement, including scroll and engagement tracking
Cookies set by the comment system and by embedded social or video content
Affiliate network cookies and how attribution works
What changes when a visitor refuses consent

How a creator, blogger or newsletter publisher actually moves personal data

Newsletter subscriptions

Email address plus the consent record, and usually behavioural data - opens, clicks, device and location inferred from the open pixel.

Affiliate link click-through

Passing a subscriber or visitor to an affiliate network, which sets its own identifier and attributes the sale.

Comments and community

Name, email, IP address and user agent, stored indefinitely unless configured otherwise.

Ad networks and header bidding

Real-time bidding transmits an enormous amount of contextual and identifier data to a large number of parties.

Lead magnets and gated content

A download in exchange for an email is consent for the download, not automatically for a newsletter.

Analytics and audience measurement

Page-level analytics, scroll and engagement tracking, and any A/B testing on content.

Third parties the draft will ask you about

Beehiiv, Substack, ConvertKit or Mailchimp · Amazon Associates and affiliate networks · Google AdSense or Mediavine · Disqus or a native comment system · Google Analytics 4 or Plausible · Stripe for paid subscriptions

The rules that apply

Marketing consent for newsletters

Opt-in in the UK and EU, with the consent record retained. Double opt-in is effectively expected in Germany and is good practice everywhere.

Open and click tracking

Processing that subscribers rarely anticipate, and that several EU regulators have said should be disclosed and, in stricter readings, consented to separately.

Affiliate and sponsorship disclosure

Clear and conspicuous, before the endorsement, in the same medium. Footer disclosures have repeatedly been found insufficient.

Comment systems

Storing commenter name, email, IP address and user agent, often through a third-party service that publishes some of it.

Advertising and analytics consent

Ad networks and analytics require consent before firing in the UK and EU, which for ad-funded publishing is a revenue-relevant constraint.

What the generated cookie policy contains

What the technologies actually are
Cookies, local storage, session storage, pixels, SDKs and server-side tags - the law covers storage and access on a device, not the word "cookie".
A per-cookie table
Name, provider, purpose, category and duration for each cookie, which is the format UK and EU regulators expect to see.
Category definitions
Strictly necessary, functional, analytics and advertising, with an honest explanation of why only the first runs without consent.
How consent was obtained and how to change it
The banner, the granular choices, and a permanent link to reopen preferences - the withdrawal route has to be as easy as the acceptance route.
Third-party cookies and onward use
Which providers set cookies through your site and what they do with the data once it is theirs.
Browser and device controls
Practical instructions, plus a note that blocking strictly necessary cookies will break parts of the service.

The creator compliance set

Document how each subscriber joined
Source, date and the wording they saw. Your email platform usually records this if you ask it to.
Put affiliate disclosure above the link
On every page and in every email where affiliate links appear.
Disclose open and click tracking
One sentence in the privacy policy and a line in the signup form.
Set comment retention
Especially for IP addresses collected for spam control.
Decide the ad consent position
And configure the banner to match it honestly.
Separate lead magnets from newsletter consent
With a distinct, unticked opt-in.

Where this usually goes wrong

Affiliate disclosure in the footer only

It has to be before the link, in the same medium, and unavoidable. Footer-only disclosure is the pattern regulators single out.

Lead magnet emails added to the newsletter automatically

Two different purposes. The second one needs its own consent.

Open tracking never disclosed

Subscribers do not expect a tracking pixel in every email, and several regulators expect it to be disclosed.

Ad tags firing before consent

For ad-funded sites this is the whole compliance problem, and the revenue trade-off has to be faced rather than avoided.

Comment IP addresses stored forever

Collected for spam control, retained long after that purpose expires.

Purchased or scraped subscriber lists

No valid consent, and importing them contaminates deliverability as well as compliance.

Frequently asked questions

Does a blog need a privacy policy?

If it has analytics, comments, a newsletter or ads - which is nearly every blog - then yes. Each of those is processing personal data.

How should I disclose affiliate links?

Clearly, before the link, in the same medium and unavoidably. A line at the top of the post or immediately above the link. Footer-only disclosure has repeatedly been found inadequate.

Can I add lead magnet downloads to my newsletter?

Only if you asked. The download and the newsletter are separate purposes, and the second needs its own unticked opt-in.

Do I need to disclose email open tracking?

You should. Subscribers do not expect it, and several EU regulators treat undisclosed tracking pixels as a transparency failure.

Do I need a cookie policy as well as a privacy policy?

In the UK and EU, yes in practice. PECR and the ePrivacy Directive regulate storing and reading information on a device separately from GDPR’s rules on processing, and the per-cookie disclosure is too detailed to bury in a privacy policy.

Do analytics cookies need consent?

In the UK and EU, yes - the ICO has said repeatedly that analytics is not "strictly necessary". Some EU regulators allow a narrow exemption for first-party, non-shared audience measurement, but the default answer is consent first.

Does a cookie policy need updating when I add a tool?

Yes, and this is the clause that goes stale fastest. Every new tag, pixel or embedded widget adds cookies your table does not list. Scanning your own site on a schedule is the only reliable way to keep it honest.

What about cookies set by embedded video and maps?

They count. An embedded YouTube player or Google Map sets third-party cookies as soon as it loads, so either it loads only after consent, or you use a privacy-preserving embed mode and say so.