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How Not to be a Networking Twit(terer)

Posted on by lwidmer

A reminder – next week starts our official countdown to Writers Worth Day on May 14th. Mark your calendars! I promise tips, sage advice, and maybe even a prize. I’ll get you a widget soon – I’m without my PhotoShop and I need to find out how to get a URL embedded. I say here…

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The Third Annual Writer’s Worth Day

Posted on by lwidmer

It’s that time of year again – time to celebrate the value and skills you bring to your clients and the writing world. The Third Annual Writer’s Worth Day is next week – May 14th. All next week we’ll be celebrating by encouraging each other through worth-inducing tips, advice, and sharing of experiences. Please make…

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Do You Have What It Takes?

Posted on by lwidmer

We can talk all day about the feast-and-famine cycle, the unruly clients, the non-paying clients, and the aversion we have to marketing or billing. But at the root of it, we love what we do because it fits us. The cycle of freelancing is part of what we do just as our ability to work…

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Mind the Gap

Posted on by lwidmer

What’s the toughest part of freelancing? Sometimes it’s the work that doesn’t arrive. We talked last week about not playing a waiting game with clients, but this is different. There are times when no matter what you attempt, you can’t find clients or projects. So what then? If you’re a long-time freelancer, you’re used to…

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Sick Days and Work Piles

Posted on by lwidmer

Busy morning already searching down an odd statistic that I remember reading and saving, but can’t find (figures – I’m usually very careful to bookmark these things). I like being busy, but I’m fending off a cold on top of the recurrent sinus infection, so the world’s a chemically-induced fog at the moment. Spent a…

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Monthly Assessment – April 2010

Posted on by lwidmer

Maybe it was the dread leading up to April 15th, but this month seemed to drag for me. I was busy, but not with client work. We had company for ten days, then taxes in the middle of that visit. But the guests are gone (sadly) and the taxes are paid (thankfully). This month’s earnings…

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Thursdays and Deadlines

Posted on by lwidmer

I have a deadline tomorrow. Technically it’s a Saturday deadline, but I covet my weekends too much to spend them working. I’m here 8-5 every weekday. That should be enough. So I wrote the article and sent it to the editor yesterday. There were a few glitches – one of the contacts, an association, has…

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Worthy Tip: Take No Prisoners

Posted on by lwidmer

Maybe because I’m busy I have less patience, but I suspect it’s more because I’m tired of shoddy service. I found myself being forceful with someone on the phone yesterday. On April 19, I transferred money to my daughter’s account using POPMoney. (My bank has dropped the ability to send funds between that bank’s accounts,…

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The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Posted on by lwidmer

In case you missed it, I’ve got a blog post up over at About Freelance Writing. Go on over and give Anne Wayman some link and comment love. Quoting Tom Petty in the title, I would like to ask an open question – how many times in the past 12 months has someone contacted you…

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Irritation Amid Hilarity

Posted on by lwidmer

I’ve beaten the content-mill drum pretty loudly. You’ve heard me suggest that someone getting paid ten bucks or less is not a writer. Thanks to Irreverent Freelancer Kathy Kehrli, I now have proof. She posted a link to an article that is, well, not an article, but a ridiculous string of nonsensical sentences. An example:“A…

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  1. Wendy Avatar
    Wendy

    If the person I'm thinking of is the same person responsible for this site, then I'm thinking that they know English more than this site shows. They're also good at making trouble on forums. But, I could be wrong.

    I haven't actually found anything that I knew to be stolen, but there have been times I've read articles on one site that I swore looked familiar, like I'd seen it somewhere else only with a few different words or phrases.

    Reply
  2. Cassie Tuttle Avatar
    Cassie Tuttle

    I also saw this article (and others "written" by the same person), and I was outraged.

    If someone had appropriated my work in this manner, I'd be quite upset. If someone had paraphrased/translated and mangled my work this way in an attempt to pass it off as his own, I'd be livid.

    The worst case of theft (plagiarism) I've seen lately was during a copyedit I was performing on a title for a well-respected university press (their law division). During the copyediting, I also was checking facts. In more instances than I can count, I found passages of exact wording lifted from — of all places — Wikipedia! And this, by a professor/attorney!

    Reply
  3. CFD Trade Avatar
    CFD Trade

    Has anyone encountered the term spinning articles for SEO. I guess this is one theft I can think of that the SEO world is attempting to legitimize. However, it is really disrespect to the original writer of an article.

    Reply
  4. Carson Brackney Avatar
    Carson Brackney

    As long as Google continues to treat mechanically spun content (and that's what this is–there was no human re-write of the misappropriated original article) as "unique" and of a value approximating legitimate material, there will be a motive for this kind of skeeziness.

    I haven't dug into the this particular article in great detail, but I'm wiling to bet that its author originally distributed it to EzineArticles.com and/or other article directories.

    Anyone who plans on using outlets like those as a means of promotion should be aware that those waters are the preferred fishing territory for steal-and-spin types.

    In response to Cassie's comment… The problem really isn't that someone else is mangling the article and trying to claim authorship. They're actually spinning the article with the original author's name and link intact, thus making it appear as if the legitimate creator is a moron. The fact that the original writer is still getting a backlink probably isn't enough of a payoff to justify that, either.

    That's one interesting thing about this instance, actually. In most cases, the spinning thieves will *strip* the resource box and any/all mention of the original creator. This one is sloppy and icky at the same time.

    On the bright side, most of these efforts fail to ever capture a set of human eyeballs. The sites, the spins and everything else is created for the search engines with zero expectation of actual, human traffic.

    Which brings this comment back to its start… As long as Google is the champ and as long as Google is unable to differentiate between quality and lunacy, this will continue to happen. All of the C&Ds and DMCA notices in the world won't counteract those motives–especially when only a fraction of the a-holes are noticed and when most who are operate anonymous, disposable, automated sites.

    Reply
  5. allena Avatar
    allena

    yeah I was going to say this is a mechanical spin, not sure it has much to do with content… Supposedly, content mills have editors who would probably claw their own eyes out if they saw this stuff.

    Reply
  6. Devon Ellington Avatar
    Devon Ellington

    In cases of international dispute, contact the embassy — the country's embassy here in the US, and the US embassy in that region. Include a copy of the cease and desist letter. That usually makes some noise and gets some results.

    What you don't do is ignore it.

    Doesn't matter if the person claims "not to understand" — it's still theft and needs to be squashed.

    Reply
  7. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    Carson, I hear you. In this case, however, the real crime is that other people's LEGITIMATE work is displayed alongside this swill. A link to someone's editing site – and she assures me she didn't know anything about it – and a video by another person. I can almost guarantee this isn't sanctioned by the other person, either.

    If it were just the crap content, we could overlook it. It's not. It's the reputation damage to those who are unaware their names are associated with this garbage.

    Great idea, Devon.

    Wendy, pop me an email. I've been wanting to ask you something.

    Reply
  8. Carson Brackney Avatar
    Carson Brackney

    Agreed completely. Personally, if it were happening to me and I had the time or motivation to do something about it, I'd try an email to the site owner followed by a DMCA notice to the site's host (the one in question seems to be at HostGator).

    I'm sure most of your readers know about it, but here's an excellent resource for those who find themselves duking it out with thieves: Plagiarism Today Jonathan Bailey has created a great site dedicated to this kind of crappola and how to make it go away.

    Oh, one other thing… The contact for the domain in question claims to reside in beautiful Valley Cottage, NY. The WhoIs data includes a name, an email address and a phone number. They could all be fake, but it might be worth a phone call if she wanted to try to fix things in a hurry.

    Reply
  9. Wendy Avatar
    Wendy

    Lori, I zipped you an email.

    Reply
  10. Cathy Avatar
    Cathy

    Great suggestions on fighting this. The problem is the time to go after someone who basically could care less and more than likely will ignore communication. That's why the "hit them where it hurts" suggestions are great.

    I agree this has nothing to do with being read-at least you hope that's the case with all the complete gibberish.

    It certainly is an interesting world. 🙂

    Reply
  11. Jenn Mattern Avatar
    Jenn Mattern

    In addition to the embassy issue Devon mentioned, try contacting hosts if this happens to you. Even if they're not under DMCA rules, many hosts worldwide still have terms banning this, and they'll shut down the account for term violations. Not always, but it's worth a try.

    In this particular case, there's an even better option. The real author should file a DMCA complaint with Google — specifically Adsense. They might be able to get the Adsense account banned, hitting the site financially (which also hits that site owner on any other site where they use Adsense if they're account is banned). That, and you can have their content de-indexed. Hit them in the wallet and traffic, and they tend to be incredibly responsive about stopping their sh*t.

    I recently had to deal with a social media / Internet marketing splog that admitted right on the site that they did nothing but aggregate others' content in full. I outlined exactly what I'd do if they didn't get the material removed, including reporting them for de-indexing, Adsense account ban, and reporting them to their host. They not only removed it, but they've started providing their own original content instead of aggregating full content from others — completely overhauled their business model. Worth a try.

    Reply
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