Plagiarism: Don't Get Ripped Off

If you’re the person responsible for your website’s content, you know how hard it can be to get everything right.

• You need to have the raw materials, the facts and figures around which you’re creating your copy.
• You have to think about the tone of what you’re writing and how it fits in with the rest of the site.
• You need to construct your argument carefully, deciding the audience you’re writing for.
• You also have to make sure everything is completely consistent, style-wise.
• Do you say “you are” or “you’re”? Do you have them both?
• “It is” or “it’s”?

Stuff that may seem over-analysed and not worth the trouble, but absolutely necessary.

That’s why it’s so maddening when you get ripped off. When someone trawls through your site, sees something they like, and then just steals it for their own site, maybe changing the odd word here or there.

And what can you do? The Internet is global, so anyone, anywhere, could right now be looking at your site and thinking “I’ll have a piece of that”. What’s to stop them changing a few things around and then passing it off as something they wrote themselves?

I’ll introduce you to a site I came across recently. It’s called “Copyscape” and means I don’t worry about people ripping me off anymore.

The site allows you to input your website’s URL. Press “Go” and their search function will do a trawl of the Internet to see if your text has been stolen. It’s completely free and will show you up to five results. If you think your copy may have been stolen by more than five sites, you can sign up for the “Premium” service, which charges 5 cents per search.

Me? I’m cheap, so I just use the freebie part of it. But why not have a look for yourself? I have no links with the makers of the site whatsoever, I just think it’s a handy service. Check it out here:

http://copyscape.com/

Good hunting.

You’re very welcome to reprint any of the Good Business articles on your website and/or newsletters free of charge, provided:

• you don’t change the article in any way
• you include the writing credit below (including all website links)

Daniel O'Connor is a website copywriter, advertising copywriter and marketing copywriter using the name Daniboy. He can be contacted in the UK on +44-1892-518269 or at mail@daniboy.com. Visit http://www.daniboy.com for further details of his services, including bespoke article writing, and more free reprint articles.

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