Getting Discouraged - Total Sales=Stolen Content

[LindaM]

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to share that I had 3 articles stolen in the last 3 days, all showing up on Associated Content. One of these was stolen for the second time!! I had 2 articles stolen last month, as well. (both support and AC have been alerted of course)

I guess I'm starting to get pretty discouraged, since I just joined CC in late June and had 5 sales between July and August. My sales now equal my stolen content. Of course the thieves are smart enough to steal only the articles that are available for full rights...

Can anyone share how they remain positive about this and how they hang in there when sales are slow for them and theft is high? In the past, I've sold most of my work for full rights directly to publishers and occasionally for page view pennies. This is my first time marketing this way...

Thanks,
Linda

[Lysis]

Contact support.

It happens all the time with web content. I wish someone would put the smack down on AC. It seems AC is most of the complaints around here.

[Phil]

Do not get discouraged. There are steps you have taken. Don't let it end what could be very lucrative.

Y'know I simply never worried about web thefts. But, since joining CC I've heard and read enough about it that I am curious to see if anything I did was good enough to be stolen. What is the best way to check that? I'm assuming a long quote and google search, but am open to better ideas. Thanks. - Phil

[LindaM]

Thanks for responding Phil. The better way to find your stolen content is to set up 'Google Alerts' You select a sentence or 2 from all of your articles and put quotation marks around it and Google will troll along the web for the article constantly. It can take Google a week or so to find a stolen article after it has been placed on another site. Associated Content is the main culprit for me. From now on, I plan to search their site regularly for all of my content.

Linda

[Lysis]

Thanks for responding Phil. The better way to find your stolen content is to set up 'Google Alerts' You select a sentence or 2 from all of your articles and put quotation marks around it and Google will troll along the web for the article constantly. It can take Google a week or so to find a stolen article after it has been placed on another site. Associated Content is the main culprit for me. From now on, I plan to search their site regularly for all of my content.

Linda

AC is HORRIBLE when it comes to content theft. The only reason I don't even try to put up stuff for them is because of their reputation for their writers stealing content.

[kquinn]

Wow, I had no idea that people were doing this. I write for AC, though I'm just now getting some articles published. I believe AC mentioned plaigarism scanners or something like that, but apparently, they aren't doing it. How awful for you

[Lysis]

Wow, I had no idea that people were doing this. I write for AC, though I'm just now getting some articles published. I believe AC mentioned plaigarism scanners or something like that, but apparently, they aren't doing it. How awful for you

CC doesn't index the articles, which is the right way to do it. But, it's also why AC's plag flag isn't raised when they check the article. Some poor guy on the webmaster forums used articles from a site that indexed the articles (bad) and got his site slammed with a duplicate penalty from Google. It's important to get plagiarized material down quickly, because if Google crawls the plagiarized article even AFTER the content has been taken down, it's still in their index. So, when a customer buys an article for fullrights and puts his article up, if his site happens to get crawled before the AC plagiarized article gets removed, he'll take a hit in duplicate content. He probably would never notice, since it will be removed once Google crawls the AC site again (which I imagine it gets crawled often), but Google is really cracking down on duplicate content.

It's really frustrating, but it's also not uncommon. You just gotta keep fighting it.

[Constant]

I know its so discouraging, and I appreciate the positive words guys! You are all doing as much as you can to help us, by letting us know when you find stolen articles and continuously creating new content. AC is not the culprit here, though there business model makes it an attractive place to post stolen articles. We do indeed hide our content which makes it impossible for them to know when they are posting stolen articles, and they have been extremely aggressive in taking down and censuring the thieves. We are working on a number of different methods to make theft more difficult. Problem is that in the world of computers the rule is: "if you can see it, you can steal it!" Just keep letting us know what's happening and we will keep advocating and throwing our weight behind complaints and DMCA filings.

Cheers,

David

[LindaM]

I think we are particularly vulnerable on CC because our material is 'virgin' quality. I have not found any of my articles stolen from the penny-per-view content sites that I write on. Thieves know that is a useless endeavor. I just wonder if AC is paying the $1 to the thieves for 'original' content.

Also, does everyone know that when you google your name, your CC article archive comes up and all of your articles DO show on the Web??

Linda

[Constant]

When you Google your name your PROFILE comes up with the short summary (not actually part of the article you submitted), which is original and listed, not your article's long summary (a portion of your actual article that is displayed as an example to buyers). There is no risk of having the Search Engines view any of your articles when they are posted on the site.

David

[LindaM]

Hi David,

Thanks for replying. When I google my name, yes my profile comes up and all of the long sample text I have listed for buyers to proof on each and every title. In some cases, this is the entire article, in other cases it is 3/4, depending on what I chose to list on the sample portion. Long story short, my entire archive is open for view. If you'd like to see the links let me know and I can send them through via support.

Linda

[Lysis]

Hey Linda, I just googled you and it's only your profile page. You wouldn't happen to be looking at history through Chrome, are you? Dumb question, I know, but I don't see your stuff on Google.

[LindaM]

Hi Lysis,

No, I'm not looking through Chrome. When you googled my name the link should have said 'articles for sale', page 1 or 2. The profile page comes up but when you scroll down you see all of the articles just like when you're inside CC. You can click on them and all of the info comes up. Can you tell me exactly what you see? This is so weird...

Thanks for your help
Linda

[Celeste Stewart]

If you're clicking the link in Google, it takes you directly to the CC profile page, so of course you'll see whatever is there. What's your CC user name?

[Celeste Stewart]

Now, if you click my link on Google, it takes me directly to CC.