I got an interesting email this morning. I was advised by a new website that theyd acquired a database of 36,000 articles...and they wanted to know if any of my content was within it.
So I visited the site and I found they had indeed acquired some of my articles. No big problem at first blush - thats what article marketing is: you write great content and in exchange for someone else promoting your work, you get the bio box with active hyperlinks to your chosen webpage (great for increasing your web presence.)
However there was more to this - they were stealing my traffic and heres how they did it...
Generally publishing your article to an official article syndication site is safe, but theres always someone out there looking twist things up a little. You see, most publishers do things properly - they search for relevant content and then they selectively review it and if it works for them, theyll publish it. Great - thats how things are supposed to work.
Then there are the other types of publisher...
Theyll harvest anything and everything and put it all on to a website...but thats not the end of it. If they simply did that your articles would be ok. But no, these guys dont want to create a content specific niche portal site, nah - these guys are looking for traffic to monetize and heres what they do - they steal yours!
And heres how:
They take your article content and they ALTER it. This is a MAJOR NO NO and is a violation of your rights and your terms of use. And get this, the way they alter it is dead sneaky. They dont do it on their site... they do it JUST BEFORE THE PAGE IS SERVED UP (which makes it very hard for people to spot) by adding extra hotlinks to your article copy. If you want to know how they do this Ill happily explain it because it involves some very clever programming and some underhanded tactics the search engines dont approve of (but thats another story for another day...)
Back to your altered article. So your article, which had a couple of links at the very end directing people to your website or product is now sending traffic away from you and over to them - because they stole your traffic by adding extra hotlinks to their chosen words.
And the really clever part is this, your article could be about gardening and lawncare, and you made reference to a certain brand of lawnmover in the content - these sneaky traffic stealers can dynamically turn that lawnmower word into a hyperlink so it becomes clickable and steals your traffic and offers the lawnmower for sale! Ill admit its clever, but its contrary to the spirit of the publishing exchange idea and another example of a writer getting the shaft!
This is big business. There are some major players on the Internet promoting the technology to do this. In fact, theyre making a pretty penny selling the software to do this. Ironically the technology that performs this little miracle of traffic theft is freely available elsewhere (and Im not telling you where...)
Anyway, rant over. If you use articles to market your products and service (and you should - it rocks!) then you also need to protect your Intellectual Property. Remember, you are creating content to drive traffic to your product or service so when some else adds their links to your content they are in fact stealing your potential customers.
If you need to see whats going on here, imagine this: You sell widgets from your store. You spent time and energy promoting your store, you have great advertising and people visit you regularly. Business is good. Then a competitor who doesnt want to take the time to create valuable marketing and advertising promotions decides its easier to simply walk into your store, tap your prospect on the shoulder and while theyre walking them out of your store - theyre selling them their product!
JAMES BURCHILL is an experienced Internet Marketing & Business Development consultant providing strategic and tactical services to select clients seeking to architect their on and offline marketing success. James is a published author, a passionate advocate of technology and the Internet, as well as an avid study of classical advertising and marketing strategies. Prior to establishing his own consulting practise, he served as VP of Professional Services and VP of IT & Consulting and implemented multi-million dollar solutions for Oracle, the British and US Governments, Rolls Royce UK and many others. James even taught Computer Science at one of Torontos leading colleges and continues to coach private clients on a select basis. For more articles and information visit James blog at or checkout his main site at
Here are some things Ive learned about selling on the Internet Id like to share with you. Perhaps these ideas will help you with your thinking and planning so you can be more successful with your Internet selling efforts in the days ahead.
Back in the Great Depression, (1930s) when I was seven or eight years old, I wanted to learn to ride a bike and use it to make spending money. My parents could not afford to buy a bike for me so I scrounged around and found enough old bicycle parts to put together my own 2-wheeler. While learning to ride it, I fell many times, crashed into trees, hit telephone poles and broke both my bike and a couple of bones. Eventually, through trial and error, I did learn how to ride it. On my twelfth birthday my folks gave me a brand new bike. You can imagine how proud and excited I was over that new bike! I rode my shiny new bike everywhere. Later, I used that bike while selling magazines to earn my own spending money.
It occurs to me now that selling on the Internet these days is in many ways like learning to ride a bicycle. It is not easy at first. There are lots of things to think about all at the same time. But once learned, youll never forget. Heres what Ive had to learn to do.
Obviously, first of all, I had to learn to use my computer. Then, I had to figure out what the Internet was all about. After that, I focused on finding as many ways as I could to reach the one right market for my products. A major concern was that I had to find low cost ways to get people who could buy my products to just take a look at my website. I knew I would need a steady stream or flow of browsers both day and night. I needed traffic. Over time, I found several ways to get traffic, but then another problem appeared. I had to teach myself to write. In short, I had to learn to write the kind of sales copy needed to convert the traffic from being mere browsers or surfers, into customers. Not an easy job, to say the least.
My most successful technique in that respect, since I am not a good salesman, has been to present myself to my website visitors as someone they could both trust and at the same time think of as their personal: Assistant Buyer. By now, I have learned to be a pretty good assistant purchasing agent. So, in that roll, I no longer try to sell, I simply try to help people find and purchase (from me) what it is they want to fill their needs.
As I said before, after I mastered balance and control of my first bike, I was able to use it as a very efficient, easy to use tool to help me make the spending money I needed back then.
In the same way, these days, your computer can be your bike, your Internet vehicle. It can be your tool to discover some of the many ways you can successfully show prospective buyers on the Internet what you have to fill their many needs.
In this way, you too can find yourself successfully - selling on the Internet!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terry L. Weber
Terry Weber is a retired advertising/direct mail sales letter copywriter and inventor of several useful items. Terry and his wife Doris are Habitat For Humanity, RV Care-A- Vanners who, for the past eight years have volunteered to help build more than 36 houses all over the USA. They travel to and from the 2-week long builds in their RV. The money they make on their Crafty-Ones website helps them pay their expenses to and from those volunteer Habitat builds.