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Maybe you have thought about starting a blog for your ideas, or business, as a platform to share your expertise, or simply for entertainment purposes only.  Whatever the reason, blogging can be a great outlet for you to express yourself, build up a rapport with your readers, and also help you to earn extra income.  In some cases blogging can lead to a full-time income.

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That is exactly why I wrote the book, “How to Make Money Everyday Blogging for Full-Time Income” which you can check out on Amazon if you are interested in doing this.

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The Ugly Side of Blogging

But there is an ugly side to blogging that you need to know about as well.  What is that?  It is the fact that other people will literally STEAL your content.  Remember the story about Goldilocks and the Three Bears where they use the phrase someone’s been sitting in my chair, sleeping in my bed, and so on?  Well, someone has been stealing content from this blog, “HomeBased Mommie” and posting it on their blog…which is Internet theft!

If you come across a blog post about 25 Work at Home Jobs that pay Via PayPal on the Internet you will know that they got it from me.  I wrote Work at Home Jobs that Pay via PayPal here on this blog back in Feb. All you have to do is to look at the content and you will see that this person used an article spinner to change some of the wording and jumble around the companies.  The only thing that was added was a different title and a numbered list.

They never even took the time to write an original article themselves.  You can check the time stamp date when I actually researched and wrote the article and published it on this blog back in Feb.  This post was published just 3 days ago.  How convenient.  But what if everybody did this?  There would simply be regurgitated content all over the Internet.  What’s worse is that there is no telling who else this person is attacking or how many.

The Consequences of Stealing Content

Once it is found out that a person is plagiarizing, their reputation is destroyed, their audience loses trust in them and they are viewed as opportunists that will resort to any means necessary to copy, steal and mimic you without any remorse.

But there are REAL writers with good morals and integrity that would never stoop to this level. You may think that plagiarism is harmless but let me give you an example.

Suppose I were to share a post with you that I have neither written nor given permission to write and passed it off as my own material.  For example, what if Colonel Sander’s original recipe was not really original and he took it from someone else?

How would you feel if you found out?  

It would probably leave you with a bad feeling.

What if I published a book and got all of the information from a magazine and was making money from the sales of that book?

You would probably be irate with me and demand your money back, which you have a right to do so.  I would now be classified as a scam artist profiting off of other people’s material and that is why I am speaking out today.  I am fighting and exercising my rights to protect my content.  Just because my content is published digitally does not give anyone the right to republish it and use article spinning to post it on their blog.

For those who are not aware.  Here is the definition of plagiarism referenced by the Windows Club.

Most of us are creators when on the Internet. We think and we post our thoughts to websites, forums, blogs and social networking sites. We work on articles, tutorials, how-to’s and more! As soon as you post your thoughts or research to the Internet, it becomes your property. You automatically get copyright to the material – be it a blog, an e-book or your web-page. Very few countries require you to register your work for copyright and any work of you – digital or on paper – cannot be used by anyone else without your written permission. But like in real life, there are people on the Internet who will simply pick up your work and publish it as their own.  You can read more about plagiarism here.

But how would you know if someone is copying your online content?  

It is easier than you may think.  All you have to do is to go to Copyscape and enter the URL to see if there are duplicates of your content online.  Once you find out then you will need to contact the person who did this and request that they remove the copied content.  In order to know where their site is hosted, you will go to a site called Whois and put in the name of the site.  If they have had the habit of doing this for some time and refuse to stop then you will go through these next steps.

  • Find out who is hosting their site and contact them and explain that you are a victim of plagiarism.
  • You can also go to Google to take legal action to get the site de-indexed from the search engines due to copyright infringement.
  • You can also fill out a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) to make a formal complaint as well.

This may seem like a lot of hassle but if you want to protect your content whether you are a writer or blogger from content thieves, you will have to go through all these steps.  Unscrupulous people who resort to these tactics need to be exposed and shamed especially if they claim to be a writer (which they clearly are not) and they are in your niche passing themselves as a reliable source when they just stole content from another blog.

  • The ugly truth is that just because you claim to be a blogger does not mean that you are one.
  • Just like there are good and bad people there are also good and bad bloggers.

But don’t remain silent.  You have rights and you can and should fight to protect your content from thieves.

Don’t let this post discourage you from blogging whatsoever because blogging can be a wonderful endeavor for you.  If that is your goal, pursue it and give it your best but do not resort to copying others because it will only hurt you when you are caught.

If you see this happening to your’s or anyone else’s blog you have the right to speak up and point it out.  They need to be called out for these deceptive and hurtful tactics.

Has your content ever been copied by someone else and spun just to be posted on their blog? Please leave me your comments below and thank you for reading.


4 Comments

Kathleen · March 20, 2015 at 3:33 pm

Glad you wrote this ! I know who the culprit is and she has stolen other blog’s content as well. It’s very frustrating – we take the time to do the research and hard work. I attempted to contact you regarding this via your advertising form. Would love to hear from you.

    aw1219 · March 20, 2015 at 8:28 pm

    Hi Kathleen, I am so glad that you are speaking out! No more silence. It stops right here. I will contact you right away because if we all stand together we can not only bring awareness to this sad situation but hopefully bring them to justice.

Patricia O · March 22, 2015 at 12:58 am

I don’t know who this person is but I understand you being annoyed. I have watched your videos from time to time – though as I’m in the UK I’m not eligible for all the jobs you mention, but your videos do provide food for thought. Is the culprit based in the US? Some countries have stiffer internet protocols than others. Co-incidentally a website I sometimes visit which has nothing to do with job-hunting (think very popular fantasy TV show) has recently disabled content copying, so content nabbing seems to be rife.

    aw1219 · March 22, 2015 at 3:42 am

    Hi Patricia,

    The person is based in the US and I think that Google needs to really address this problem because it has gotten way out of hand. I am just glad that I found out so that this can be exposed. Maybe in time, Google will be able to detect, disable and de-index websites that do this right away.

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