Unscrupulous use of ezine article I wrote!?

[carlos123]

I don't know if this is the appropriate forum to ask this at or not but I had a question about what appears to be an unscrupulous use of an ezine article I wrote to actually compete against the site for whom I wrote it.

Compete in theory at least because they are not actually competition...yet.

What happened is that I wrote an ezine article (for a client site). It was then copied by another Adsense publisher and placed in their site off ezine. All well and good in one sense as far as normal ezine syndication policy is concerned (I think).

The problem is that they turned some of the words in my article into a link to a page on their site. And they inserted the article into their site in such a way that it makes it appear that the site the resource link points to is theirs. Not my clients!

They did at least leave the link in the resource text alone.

Now part of the fault may lie with the way I wrote the resource box for my client where I did not spell out their name in it.

I just said something to the effect that "If you want to know more about...so and so...visit my [keyword anchored link] site."

I am wondering about their creating a link out of some of the words in the article I wrote for my client first. Whether that is a violation of ezine policy or not (we'll be asking ezine this but I thought I would ask here as well).

But more importantly I am wondering if this is common. Do other Adsense publishers scrape content of ezine, even in line with ezine policy, and then use it to compete with the very author of that article who themselves is an Adsense publisher?

People are desperate for money and I suppose things will get much worse than they presently are but to see this is a bit surprising for me. It would seem that the more successful the sites I am working on become and the better the quality of my articles are the more they will get scraped or unscrupulously used.

Any suggestions or input on this would be appreciated.

Carlos

[GeorgR.]

Easy: Contact the site owners (do a WHOIS lookup or email them if there's email on their site)...and politely but clearly tell him to change the links back to yours or remove the article.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Easy: Contact the site owners (do a WHOIS lookup or email them if there's email on their site)...and politely but clearly tell him to change the links back to yours or remove the article.

Thanks for the input George. Good advice. I mean to not go overboard in breaking out the lawyers or DCMA take down notices to Google type of thing.

I guess I was just rather surprised is all. Rather shocked is perhaps a better description of my initial reaction.

Aside from seeing this happen to me and getting over my initial gut level reaction I still would like to know if this is something that happens very often to warriors who have put up articles at ezine.

I mean where someone takes your article, sticks it on their site, and sticks Adsense on it. In effect becoming a competitor with your own article!

In the present case this person took the article and made a change to it that I believe is not in line with ezine syndication policies but I am more concerned about someone copying articles in the future as allowed by ezine and becoming my competitor with my own article.

Has anyone else experienced that?

This has cemented in my mind the need to create my own article directory so that I can place on my articles a different policy with regard to syndication of my articles. I will stipulate on my copyright that no article that I upload to my article site can be placed on any site page that has Adsense on it. Maybe even on any domain that has Adsense on it.

Personally I really don't write ezine articles to have them syndicated. I write them and have put them up on ezine to get backlinks. That's it. But I can accomplish the same thing by putting up my articles at my own article site and do so with a lot more editorial freedom than ezine gives me.

I don't mind people copying my articles and using them in newsletters or web sites in general. What I don't want is to have a fellow Adsense publisher grab my articles, put them on their own similarly keyword targeted web site, and become my competitor on the back of my writing.

Not to mention in regard to ezine article submission that someone can simply subscribe to new articles I write and receive notice of every new article that I write to get a backlink to an Adsense web site. They will then be able to simply piggy back on my keyword research and be pointed to the keywords I am targeting such that they can then create Adsense sites and follow me to my keywords all over the place. That doesn't sit too well with me either.

Call me dumb but I never realized that someone could follow me around to my sites through ezine like that.

Carlos

[GeorgR.]

I mean where someone takes your article, sticks it on their site, and sticks Adsense on it. In effect becoming a competitor with your own article!

yes, absolutely. In fact its one desired effect that articles go viral in time, people will grab the articles and they might pop up on other sites. SOME might leave links intact, and of course some wont.

Article syndication is one major reason WHY such sites like ezine/goarticles exist.

I wouldn't worry too much because i don't think that the occasional "mis-use" of an article is worth the hassle, you still get the benefit of your articles and traffic from ezine and the sites which distribute your article "properly" with your links intact. There are always black sheep - but you need to weigh whether its worth the effort to go after them. The only way to make sure your articles wont be spread would not to put them on ezine et al. places in the first place, but that cannot be really desired either? Just my $0.02

[carlos123]

I understand George. Certainly it is probably not worth the hassle going after anyone who steals articles I write, slaps Adsense on them, and uses them in a way that even ezine does not allow. I mean if they are ranked down in the hundreds while my Adsense site is ranked in the top ten...well...what can I say...they are not much of a competitor are they?

What concerns me more is that apparently ezine articles can be taken and used on sites that are targeting the very keywords I am targeting and used against me in the Adsense game legitimately so.

I am not talking about unscrupulous use of my articles anymore. I am talking about someone coming to ezine and legitimately using my articles in line with ezine syndication policy to compete with me.

That strikes me as absolute looney bins. I mean who ever heard of such a thing?

It's like writing a book, putting it up for syndication, having someone copy the content and put it in their own book and outselling you, the original author while using your own writing! Absurd.

As the saying goes fool me once shame on you...fool me twice shame on me. I did not realize until yesterday when this happened that someone could do something like (not exactly mind you since this person changed the article link wise) what happened legitimately through ezine syndication. That's just nuts!

I naively assumed that the syndication would happen on newsletters, blogs, and site pages that would not compete with me. I don't know why I thought that other than my being naive but...I'm learning.

I have been toying with the idea of making my own mini-ezine site to build my own backlinks through and this has clinched it for me. Apparently ezine has no legal protection in place to allow authors to protect themselves from competitors who want to use their articles against them. Absolutely incredible!

What strikes me as incredible in part is that internet marketers like many on this forum do that and don't think twice about it.

Anybody got a couple of articles they'd like to send me, along with the keywords they are targeting, such that I can put it on a new site targeting the same keywords and use your articles against you as a competitor? My PM is open. It would sure help me not to have to do my own keyword research and writing. Anybody? No?

Well that is exactly what ezine seems to allow!

And we put up with it all the interests of getting a few backlinks. Are we that desperate that we will put up with such a thing? Do we even realize that this can happen? I mean I know of no other industry or practice among other marketing segments where those doing the marketing give their competitors a leg up through their own efforts like this.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for spreading my articles but NOT on sites that have Adsense. What for? I mean it's all well and good that we discuss things on this forum but it's not like any of us want to be giving our articles to each other to allow us to wily nilly compete with each other. At least it sure doesn't seem like anybody here is that "generous".

And yet I can follow anybody here that writes articles on ezine, subscribe to their articles, and get notified anytime they write a new article. I think I might just do that. What a great way to not have to do my own keyword research and/or even write my own content Ezine will hand me that on a silver platter.

All I have to do is find me an author who is pointing to an Adsense site and I got you! I'll just follow you along with every new article you write down the Adsense trail of success. And I will create a better framework than you around your article content, use better SEO off page, and beat you.

Sure the articles are not as fleshed out as that which might be found on a given Adsense site but I can flesh them out a bit more easily enough. Change a word here and there. Spin it a bit. And presto. I've just used an article you wrote and will be competing against you for the keywords you are targeting.

All thanks to ezine and willing (or should I say desperate) Adsense publishers who will bend over backwards to help me compete with them.



Carlos

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

yes, absolutely. In fact its one desired effect that articles go viral in time, people will grab the articles and they might pop up on other sites. SOME might leave links intact, and of course some wont.

Article syndication is one major reason WHY such sites like ezine/goarticles exist.

I wouldn't worry too much because i don't think that the occasional "mis-use" of an article is worth the hassle, you still get the benefit of your articles and traffic from ezine and the sites which distribute your article "properly" with your links intact. There are always black sheep - but you need to weigh whether its worth the effort to go after them. The only way to make sure your articles wont be spread would not to put them on ezine et al. places in the first place, but that cannot be really desired either? Just my $0.02