I love writing. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. I’m proud to admit (sort of) that every thought I put down on paper is fresh content. Squeezed right from my own brain. This topic has been hashed and rehashed over and over in the virtual assistance world.  Tales of website plagiarism. One VA copying and pasting content right from another VA’s site. It happens ALL the time. Why? Why would someone want to have all of someone else’s ideas passed off as their own? Are these people just lazy? Don’t know any better? Think it’s flattering? Well it’s not.

Maybe these content stealers (How d’ya like that word? Brings me back to grade 3…) don’t think they’ll be caught. Maybe they don’t know about CopyScape. Maybe these people don’t realize that anyone can go to www.CopyScape.com and type in their url to find out if anyone has copied their content.

Well, the other day I typed in MannMadeTime.com at CopyScape and low and behold there was a match. Someone has copied and pasted, almost word for word, an article I wrote some time ago and have posted on my website.I’ve contacted this VA twice now, and have not received a response.  I was hoping I wouldn’t have to get nasty about it, but looks like I’m going to have to make a phone call or something.

My point is - check CopyScape regularly to see if you’ve been plagiarized.

And if you’re a plagiarizer - stop it. If you aren’t a good writer, hire someone to write your content. Don’t steal it from somebody else. You might be surprised at how inexpensive it is to hire someone to revamp or create from scratch, your web content. And once you’ve been labeled a plagiarizer among your peers (if you’re a VA, you should know VAs talk to each other…trust me) you might find out rather quickly that it doesn’t pay to take content that came from someone else’s head.

I’m done now.

Wow, I seem to be ranting a lot this week. Sorry ’bout that.

2 Comments »