Has Your Content Been Stolen?

Has your content been stolen? This can happen to any honest blogger who is always writing posts by himself. Someone might simply take advantage out of it and steal whatever posts he likes. There are at least a few different ways you can react in such situation:

1. Remain silent and do not do anything while telling yourself that you do not care about it. Sometimes if is not worth to do anything about it.
2. Contact the scraper by email and ask him to remove the stolen content from his blog. The problem is that he might not listen to you. Sometimes it might be even hard to find a way to contact him.
3. Use a Wordpress plug-in (such as RSS footer from joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/rss-footer/) that will automatically link back to your site from the website of a scraper where he published your post. This plug-in might be very useful if you want to stay informed about any attempts of stealing your content. Of course, simply knowing about your content being published somewhere will not remove it.

Overall, there are not many things you can do if your content is being stolen by some unknown website. On the other hand, webmasters of popular websites may be afraid that you might spread the news of what they did.

March 1st, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Technology, Websites | | 1 Comments

Blogging

Blogging can be very rewarding if you blog about the things you love and that are interesting. When you set up a blog you decide on which topic you are going to write about to your readers. From my experience I can say that the more attractive the subject for you, the more likely you will want to write posts on your blog and the longer you will remain a blogger. However, blogging is not only about writing. It gives us opportunities to make new friends, participate in social events and maybe even make some money. There are various websites dedicated to bloggers that are doing a great job by giving us what is the best in the blogosphere. If you enjoy writing like I do and if writing gives you a lot of fun, then writing articles and sharing them with others will not be a problem for you and you will find pleasure in it. The world of the blogosphere has never been so vibrant and alive and it is thanks to various websites that connect bloggers. Almost everybody can become a blogger, so if you have something to write about and would like to get the word spread about it, then simply start your own blog. It is also good to have conversations with other bloggers, because what can be better than spreading the word through other bloggers and writers?

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet | | 0 Comments

Social Activities and Blog Promotion

Every blogger knows how important it is to participate actively in different kinds of social activities to make out of blogging as much as possible and bring new traffic to a blog. This can be achieved by visiting various sites. With many social bookmarking websites you will be able to effectively promote your blog. Personally, I have never enough of hearing about new sites that help bloggers promote their blogs. Often, you will have the possibility to upload your favorite piece of music, photos, as well as posts. Usually, there are a lot of ways you can make yourself visible on their site and thus attract more visitors to your website. As a result, you will have a chance to meet some friends, or even create your own circle of acquaintances. There are many ways to promote a blog, but it is important to stay active and be active in various social activities.

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet | | 0 Comments

Promoting Your Blog

Blogging is for many people not only a hobby, but also a passion. They spend a lot of time working on their blog, polishing some details, networking and so on. No wonder then, that there are many bloggers who are nearly obsessed with rankings. Personally I love rankings, because it is a nice feeling to see in some cases my blog ranked high, but not only for this reason because I also enjoy to observed which are the top blogs in the blogospheare. If you are one of such people that is interested in traffic rankings, then you should be promoting your blog in various ways.
Do you want to promote your blog? If that is the case, then you might want to check out various blog bookmarking and rating sites. You can start marketing your blog by submitting your sites and blog posts to such websites. By submitting your links and blog posts to various websites you have a chance to improve your brand awareness and a chance to acquire more visitors. Of course, before you start advertising a lot you should make sure that your website has a lot of valuable content. This way there will be a bigger probability that those who visit your website for the first time will become loyal readers. Remember, marketing is one of the key aspects of blogging, so it is important not to neglect it.

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet | | 1 Comments

How to Write Guest Posts

There are more and more people writing guest posts, and that is why I feel that it might be a good idea to share my knowledge about how to do it in a proper way. This way you can avoid making mistakes, and your post will look more professional. This in turn will result in many more blogs asking you to guest blog for them. I have a few points I would like to make as the topic is quite complicated.

The most important thing is to understand what the requirements are of such post. There might be a few requirements you will have to fulfill, but often bloggers will tell you directly what they expect from you. In such case you should look at other posts on that blog to see how long they usually are. This way you will be able to estimate whether your post contains the minimum amount of words required. You should be knowledgeable about the topics you write about so consider obtaining real online degrees. You may also want to investigate whether you are expected to include any links, images, or embedded video clips. This is what many guest bloggers do not pay attention to. Later they might be disappointed that they are no longer offered to write any guest posts. To check the number of words you have written, it is a good idea to write a post in Word, as under “Tools” you might be able to find the “Word Count” option. Before sending your post, you can check if all links are working by clicking on them yourself. To see if images or videos are working properly, you might want to see how they are displayed in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and a few other browsers. Putting a lot of work into your guest post is a good idea, because that is a great way to market your blog.

January 13th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 0 Comments

Hosting a Blog on Your Own Domain

This time I would like to write about advantages and disadvantages of blogs hosted on your own domain name:

-You will have to pay for the domain name and for hosting your domain. This can amount to approximately $150 per year, but it varies depending on which hosting plan you will choose.
-If your blog is hosted on Blogspot you can incorporate AdSense, but Google will take part of the profit. However, you will not need to share your profit with Google if you decide to have your own domain.
-Other bloggers might show more respect towards bloggers who have their blog hosted on their own domain. That is because they might assume that such a blogger is more serious about blogging.
-If you have your own domain, you have a lot higher possibility to fully customize your blog. However, it might require some html and php knowledge. Make sure you learn some basic html before you decide to host your own blog.

I will leave you to make your own conclusions about hosting, because it really depends on circumstances. Overall, if you are really serious about blogging you may eventually decide to host your blog on your own domain.

January 7th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 0 Comments

Linkbaiting

Linkbaiting is a strategy that some bloggers use to attract others to link to their site. There are many ways to do so, and one of them is to offer backlinks to people that will link to your site. You can learn a lot about linkbaiting by observing how others have tried to benefit from it. Here are some examples of linkbaiting strategies used by bloggers over the years:

-John Chow asked people to post a review of his site. He also promised that he will link to anyone who does so. By organizing this event he obtained a lot of backlinks. What attracted people to participate were his blog’s high Page Rank and number of readers.
-Somewhere Over the Debt was giving a free copy of a book to a person who referred most people to her site. This resulted in contestants writing posts about her site, so she obtained a lot of backlinks this way. She also emphasized her high PR.
-Make Money online with a 13-Year Old organized a link exchange program. He requested links to three of his posts with any anchor text a blogger wanted. In turn, Carl promised to link from one of his posts.

As you see, linkbaiting is all about encouraging others to link to your site. There are also many other strategies that could be used.

December 21st, 2009 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 7 Comments

Plagiarism

Have you ever noticed that somebody on the Internet copied and published your articles on his website? This happens all the time, and I am wondering how dangerous plagiarism really is. If a person copies and pastes your posts, this must mean that your posts are very high quality. Only the best blogs on the blogosphere have their posts copied and published on other sites. That is why a typical blogger does not have to worry that much about plagiarism. Even if someone publishes something that you wrote, chances are it was done by an automated script. If you send an email to a webmaster of such a site, then you probably will not get any response. That is why I would recommend to relax and do not panic if someone copies your content. After all, plagiarism is even a bigger issue in college where students copy and paste articles from the Internet. Since your career does not depend on blogging, you do not have to worry about it as much as universities.

However, plagiarism is still a big concern, and it is especially dangerous if major search engines index the plagiarist’s post before they index the post on your website. If that happens then search engines might actually assume that you are the plagiarist. That is why you should be careful so that you will not be accused of plagiarism yourself. That might be especially a problem if Google does not idnex your website very often.

November 23rd, 2009 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Business Topics, Technology, Websites | | 4 Comments

Hecklers

The majority of bloggers would like to be famous, but with fame also come some problems. Many famous bloggers report that they encountered many unpleasant situations with people that we can call hecklers. Some people decide to leave rude comments, while other resort to even more drastic measures. There have been situations where other bloggers were making personal attacks on others in their own posts. Sometimes there are even the whole posts dedicated to it. Of course, people will be more willing to make attacks on popular bloggers, rather than less popular. Often the reason for these attacks is jealously. So how can we really deal with this? Those who encountered such situations recommend that you ignore any negative comments/posts. After all, why would you get involved in fruitless conversation with someone who is looking for a fight? The only time it might be a good idea to make an official response is when you were accused of very specific things that you have a clear answer to. In such a case you may want to respond; however, make sure that your arguments are based on facts and try to avoid being rude if that is possible.

November 2nd, 2009 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 0 Comments

Original Templates

From time to time I am thinking about what makes a good template choice. While there is a lot to write about, this time I wanted to share with you my thoughts about how many columns should a blog interested in monetizing its content have. Actually, I am not going to give a definite answer to that question, but I believe that a blog that plans to have a lot of content linked from the sidebar and possible some Google Adsense ads as well, will benefit from a 3 column template. Such templates are gaining in popularity and provide a lot of space for advertisements. Nobody can deny the fact that the blogosphere has currently millions of blogs and to be noticeable, you have to be original in some way. Often the more original you are, the better. For example, having a template that nobody else has might make your blog easier to remember, and consequently, more people may be visiting you. Putting templates aside, the most important thing when it comes to blogging is content. If you want to be an original blogger, then you should try to have original posts, and maybe even an original writing style. This is not possible for all niches, but in some cases, it might not be that difficult to try to be more original and write in a slightly different way. I cannot provide you with an easy solution, but I can just give you advice to think about it. Who knows, you might come up with some ideas.

August 25th, 2009 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 4 Comments