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Took About 5 Hours, But It Was Worth It

by Shakakka
9 replies
Hey all,

Found an author who copied my work/articles recently... HUNDREDS of articles of mine had been spun, copied, and plagiarized by this one guy over the course of a year. He'd also placed my work on his own website, in dozens of places, and it looked like he was getting significant traffic.

He copied my Ezine articles, spun them, and put them on Articles Base. Then he did the exact opposite. He took other stuff I'd written on my own site(s) also, as well as stuff I'd submitted to other article directories.

Anyway, I'm writing to tell you of my success in getting this guy shut down. It took a while to show specific examples (he was spinning my stuff to the point where the replaced words, adjectives and grammar were getting unreadable), but I filed complaints with all major article directories.

Ezine, ArticlesBase... these sites worked quickly to delete all his accounts. I also filed a DMCA complaint with Hostgator, and they're giving him 48 hours to take down all my content before they disable the site themselves.

I know this kind of thing is frustrating and not often worth the time, but the five hours I spend shutting this guy down is going to cost him thousands of dollars in lost affiliate income. To me, it felt GOOD.

Just wanted to share with everyone that it's not all that difficult to pursue this sort of thing. Jackwads like this destroy the integrity of article marketing altogether, making it more difficult for people who provide unique and compelling content.

Sorry, but spinning is ridiculous.
#hours #worth
  • Profile picture of the author RichardF
    Spinning has a couple of legit uses in my opinion, but spinning someone else's work and using it yourself is no better than copying it word for word. Congrats on your success though, I'm sure it must have felt really good Unfortunately, if you put out good content in a major niche, it's bound to happen again...
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    • Profile picture of the author ajbarnes777
      That's awesome you got this taken care of. I had to deal with something similar about a year ago. Some guy took all of my EZA articles and placed them on Articles Base word for word... and get this... he actually had the audacity to use MY FREAKING NAME on the account at Articles Base! Geez, it's one thing to go and copy someone's work, but now you got to add in identity theft on top of it?! lol

      Fortunately Articles Base was extremely helpful in this situation. They actually took all of the articles he copied and put them on my account (I just had to change the links in the bio), and then they banned his account!
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      • Profile picture of the author Shakakka
        They actually took all of the articles he copied and put them on my account (I just had to change the links in the bio), and then they banned his account!
        Haha!!! Nice. That's some sweet justice, eh?

        Seriously, the people at these article sites were very nice and helpful. I thanked them over and over for acting so quickly, too.
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    • Profile picture of the author josh123
      Originally Posted by RichardF View Post

      Spinning has a couple of legit uses in my opinion, but spinning someone else's work and using it yourself is no better than copying it word for word. Congrats on your success though, I'm sure it must have felt really good Unfortunately, if you put out good content in a major niche, it's bound to happen again...
      Agreed... in my opinion, your best bet is to just keep putting out good content and not worry about people like that.

      There's always going to be people mooching off your work. That 5 hours you spent getting him shut down could have been 5 hours spent putting out more quality content.

      I'm not saying in this particular case it wasn't worth it. I'm just saying-in general-you have to learn to ignore content stealers and do your own thing.

      If he's spinning the content to the point that it's unreadable, he's just hurting himself in the long run. Generally, people like that aren't worth worrying about anyway, because they don't last for too long.
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      • Profile picture of the author Shakakka
        There's always going to be people mooching off your work. That 5 hours you spent getting him shut down could have been 5 hours spent putting out more quality content.

        I'm not saying in this particular case it wasn't worth it. I'm just saying-in general-you have to learn to ignore content stealers and do your own thing.
        I thought the same thing, except that in some cases HIS articles were ranking above mine. Why? Because he had them on his own website, and I only had them on article sites.

        This was before I saw the light (thanks to numerous posts by Alexa) and wisdom of placing all content on my OWN site first, before giving it to the article sites.

        So basically, this guy was outranking me with my own stuff. Sorry, I couldn't sit back and let that happen. It was worth the time.
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        • Profile picture of the author FredJones
          Yes this happens - I have had copies of my article (andeven my site content) on the web - even tons of copies. But I have never managed to do what you have done today.

          GREAT JOB DONE. Congratulations.
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        • Profile picture of the author josh123
          Originally Posted by Shakakka View Post

          I thought the same thing, except that in some cases HIS articles were ranking above mine. Why? Because he had them on his own website, and I only had them on article sites.

          This was before I saw the light (thanks to numerous posts by Alexa) and wisdom of placing all content on my OWN site first, before giving it to the article sites.

          So basically, this guy was outranking me with my own stuff. Sorry, I couldn't sit back and let that happen. It was worth the time.
          Okay, thanks for elaborating. I guess in this case it was worth it because you were putting your important content on the directories first, which enabled others to steal the credit for it.

          As long as you focus on putting your important content on your site first, you should never have to worry about checking for content stealers because you are going to get credit for it first.

          One thing you might want to think about is targeting different keywords on article directories than your site (the less profitable ones, of course).

          That way, even if somebody does steal your content, it's not going to hurt you as much because you don't care about the keyword anyway. You might not get as much traffic from the directories, but you still get the backlink benefits.
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  • Profile picture of the author rosetrees
    The amount of spammers, scammers and simply lazy ****s on the internet is getting ridiculous (yes, I'm having a bad day!)

    Well done for taking action against them.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Williams
    I'm surprised they even put all the articles on your account - that's pretty cool
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