A little heat between Rosalind Gardner and Ewen Chia last week has raised an interesting topic, and I would love to share my thoughts with you - and also hear yours.
I'm not interested in who's right and who's wrong, or opinions about either of these well known online marketers.
What really piqued my interest was the term "content leech".
We've discussed this before. You may recall my tongue-in-cheek post awhile back: I’m a scum-sucking content thief. Not everyone agreed with my delivery there, and not everyone is in agreement on either Ewen or Rosalind's posts, which means there is still a lot of confusion about what's right and what's wrong...
What is a Content Leech?
A content leach is someone that uses automated programs to syndicate content from a variety of sources, and publish that syndicated content on their own website.
The purpose is to generate traffic and revenue, generally through Adsense or affiliate links. It's often called auto-blogging.
Most people that develop these types of sites rarely write any content of their own. It's more of a "set it up and forget it" type model. Not a very successful one, mind you. Certainly not a long-term passive income generator as they may have believed, as these sites rarely last long in the major search engines OR with human readers.
leech, noun /lēCH/
An aquatic or terrestrial annelid worm with suckers at both ends. Many species are bloodsucking parasites, esp. of vertebrates, and others are predators
A person who extorts profit from or sponges on others
The point Rosalind was making was the hard work put in by the people who are actually "in the know", working in the trenches, being stolen by those who simply want to profit from it without doing any real work themselves.
These "content leeches" basically piggy back off of real bloggers by syndicating (stealing?) their content in full on their own domain.
Right or Wrong?
The debate that interested me most in the conversation between Rosalind & Ewen (and their readers) was whether that was ethical or not.
Some believe it is ethical, some believe it is not.
The argument in favor of syndicating content from other blogs seems to be that if you have an RSS feed, and make that freely available, you obviously want people to syndicate your content.
I disagree.
Having an RSS feed is not an open invitation to republish that content via auto-blogging on another domain. Having an RSS feed is a means of allowing your readers to easily subscribe to your content.
It's a misconception brought on by all the auto-blogging supporters (those creating products for it). But content developers do not agree with that line of thinking.
I know I don't. Which is why I had a little fun with the content leeches awhile back when there got to be an overwhelming number of them publishing my entire blog posts on other domains.
Rosalind made a point about this in the discussion at her blog, which I agree with. She suggested the appropriate way to share a blog post you like is to publish an excerpt, with a link back to the original post, and add your thoughts to the topic.
Two Examples: Blogging Ideas and Content Marketing Tips from Jason Falls
In both of those examples, the posts were inspired by someone else's content. I shared the source, and also added my own thoughts to the topic.
This can make for a great blog post, and a great discussion starter with your own readers. But publishing a full blog post with no additional thoughts is just duplicate content. And it's pointless, in my opinion.
Sharing Content vs Creating Content
Ideally you should be creating more content than you are consuming. And the majority of the content that you share should be your own original content.
Regurgitating everyone else's content is not ever going to make you a market leader. You'll be hard pressed to build a readership or a following in your niche if you don't come up with original, thought-provoking content of your own.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't share content. I do it all the time. It's the ratio that matters. And whether you are adding anything of value to the discussion.
If your content streams consist mostly of links to someone else's content, how long do you think it will be before your readers stop following you - and start following the source?
Sharing is GOOD. Don't get me wrong. And it's part of your job as a market leader in your niche to point out great posts, threads, newsletters, videos, etc.
But the "quality share" is MUCH different than auto-blogging or RSS-scraping...
Your thoughts?
Best,
p.s. Want to learn how to easily put out lots of high quality, unique content without stressing yourself out? Check out Easy Unique Content 😉
About Lynn Terry
Lynn
Unfortunately we live in a world where people will always ride the coat-tails of others.
I'm with you on this one. RSS is to distribute your content to a wider readership, it doesn't give someone carte blanche to distribute it as their own.
When we stumble accross a new website, we generally don't question if the material is original, we just assume it is. Hence increasing the leech's hold on the market and traffic supply.
Meanwhile the person who's working hard at creating useful original content, is blissfully unaware in most cases.
It's definately unfair, but how the hell do you combat this kind of thing. I suppose you just have to call them out when you see it...much like Rosalind did.
Went ten rounds with someone regarding their theft of my content just a few weeks ago. The thief insisted that my use of RSS meant I was advertising that people could syndicate my content and he refused to remove it until I played hardball and went after his AdSense account. Ultimately he wrote a scathing letter about what a terrible person I was, how I didn't believe in sharing knowledge for the greater good, etc. He tried to vilify ME for not wanting to have my content stolen when he wasn't talented enough to write his own! There are few things worse IMO than content scrapers or "content leeches".
Some people, when they talk about "the greater good" really mean "for their own personal benefit." Ayn Rand wrote a great deal about this in Atlas Shrugged. The good news is that these "for the greater good" hypocrites simply cannot compete and will likely find something else to do sooner rather than later - all the while carping on about how unfair life is. 🙂
Lynn,
Wow, where to begin? This is a topic I think and write about a lot.
Over the past 9 1/2 months, about half of the posts in my blog have been created the way you describe: copying an excerpt of something that inspires me on someone else's blog and using it as the seed for an article of my own, with a link back to the full, original post, of course.
Once I caught the vision of using this method (which I call "Blog Riffing"), it made it fairly easy for me to go from being a twice a month blogger to a five times a week blogger without just churning out drivel for the sake of volume.
I'll use the "website" field here (ie. click my name above) to link to an article I wrote a while back about the continuum of blogging methods ranging from autoblogging (to which I'm entirely opposed) to different kinds of curation to Blog Riffing to creating 100% original content. Most of these methods CAN be legitimate (some can go either way). But in general, the more original content you produce, the more legit it is, the more benefit you'll get, and the lower the risk that you'll get "slapped" by Google someday.
Just did a quick search on an article title for one of my niche sites and there's already over 9,000 results for it. Lol, I hope at least some of those include a link back to my site. I don't worry so much about it being copied as I know it won't really benefit any of those people, but I suppose part of you feels it's wrong? I suppose it's one aspect of being in this business though - you have to expect people will try to steal your stuff, but having been in the game for a while I know it won't help them in the long-term.
I think you should only ever use an excerpt of other people's content, with your own comments added and a link back. If you can't come up with your own content then you're in the wrong game.
Autoblogging is quite common practice, although it "usually" doesn't help the site ranking as it is seen as duplicate content. Google has rolled out "Author Rank" using a method for "authors" to mark content as their own, once this becomes widespread, the "content leaching" will eventually die away.
Right or Wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore, all that matters is Google's position on this, and we know it't been trying to get rid of autoblogs since forever. Though i can't really say how successful it was, i'm pretty sure are still tons out there making money out of real content writers.
I bought a IM training course a few years ago that used this method to create "content" sites. Needless to say it was not exactly a good course, but it does show that this method is being taught to newbies and is being touted as a real method for generating content. There are a couple of WordPress plug-ins that will actually do this for you, from an RSS feed, and will put the entire article on your site. I think some of the people who use this method are just lazy cheats, while others may be just misinformed. Anyway, not something that I would do, or condone.
Hi,
I wanted to point out that the new Google update, Panda, has in it´s core to recognize this low quality sites and punish them with bad rankings.
I have to agree with you Lynn, it's okay to take a quote or excerpt but fill it out with your own opinions,views and experiences.
However you will probably never stop it and you just hope that search engines do pick up and throw out the trash.
Going after people who rip off your content is a never-ending battle. I discovered this 1 weekend abou months ago. I went after a few sites, and the more I looked, the more instances of outright theft of my work I found. I decided to let it be and focus on building traffic and writing new content.
Now if autobloggers want to rip my stuff off, I don't sweat it. I'll never stop it. Let the market decide.
What I can't stand ti because I've noticed the web actually slowing down! there are so many duplicate sites out there with spun articles that for the average person the web is becoming LESS useful - Plus, it makes our legit sites less likely to show-up on the front page of the search engines - which hits us in the pocket book!
This is a prime example as to why I don't publish much content. I'm always in fear that I may offend someone by publishing information that I learned from an amalgamation of many other sources, even though I will write everything in my own words. I could get attacked by 100 bloggers for one single post, YIKES! ... Again, which is why 95% of the content I write is purely about me.
The way I see it, there is almost nothing new (as in ideas, strategies and concepts) under the Sun to write that hasn't already been written. So what is one supposed to do? Write ONLY stuff that no one has ever thought of before? Huh! Not likely if you're writing about IM, SEO etc.
Obviously a blogger will starve if he (she) is as cautious as I am. So, where do you draw the line? Well, the answer seems to be that, however many people you ask this question, that is how many different answers you will get 😛
HOWEVER!!!
In the midst of all my careful indecisiveness, SOMEHOW my blog managed to get a Google Page Rank-3 before I had even published 20 blog posts!!! WOW! Did Google love me for being so "Unique"? Yes, I guess so. Is my blog making tons of money? NOPE!!!
I remember back in '07 or '08 when I first learned of PLR and ghost written ebooks and content. I thought this was a terrible act of dishonesty! ... To claim something is yours when you actually paid someone else to write it "for" you? That blew me away! (the curse of being a downright "Phobic" of being disingenuous to others) 😛 -- But as it turns out, that is a totally normal practice.
So YES! I'm confused about where to draw the line, but I guess I'll learn more as time goes by, right?
Thanks for letting me blab here tonight!
Gary Anderson II
aka-
To be safe, just do what fark.com is doing. Write a short original sentence and accompanied with a link.
I'm right there with you on this one, quality should definitely eclipse quantity when it comes to sharing, but people don't always realize that and that's where the over-sharing or "leech" phenomenon can come in. Such a shame!!
Laurie
With how sophisticated the search engines are nowadays using others people's content to try to profit is pretty much useless in my opinion. Way back in the day, you could get away with syndicating other people content and ranking in the search engines, therefore getting traffic.
However, nowadays if you want to make any real impact in the search engines you need fresh original content that is updated frequently. Or on some type of schedule.
So, I do not believe it is okay to steal other people's contact, and the point I am making is by today's standards it's pretty much useless to do so.
Talk soon
I think it is an unethical practice in which some people look for benefits with the effort of others who have spent much time writing quality content.
These people simply "copy" your content and start to make money with it.
The worst is when these people appear in search engines above you with a copy of your post ...
The right way to do it is called "content aggregation", exactly as you outlined above (taking excerpts from an article, including a link to the article, and adding your thoughts).
Great post, Lynn!
Most of the big names with RSS feeds have terms of use that prohibit the use of the feed for commercial purposes. So autoblogs that pull in things like Google News or EZineArticles feeds are violating the terms of use. There's no ethical way to do that.
There could be a grey area if you don't have a policy in place regarding your feed. But if you think about it, just putting something out there doesn't imply that anyone can copy in the offline world, so why should that be assumed online?
The fact is that there are people who think that everything is fair game, even when it is clearly copyrighted. We've seen this in books, music and movies for decades.
But what to do about it is still a bit of a mystery. I suspect that Google will continue to tweak its algorithms to punish these types of sites and the scrapers will continue to find creative ways to get around it.
Perhaps a browser plugin that disables all links in autoblog sites (as voted on by the users of the plugin) would at least put a crimp in the ROI for these things.
I had a blog about Turkey for about five years and constantly found my content posted in full and without my permission on numerous sites. While I didn't mind so much those that posted my articles with my website or resource box, I definitely minded when it was a porn site or some other seedy site trying to drive traffic of any sort to it. I've found my content in places you or I would never imagine or want!
I take pride in what I write and always hope it will help someone. I also like to find interesting people and ideas to share with others, so I can promote other authors' work. Sharing the news is great and giving due credit is a must! Leeching for unsavory purposes? Well, it's just a nice word for stealing, isn't it?
Fortunately Google is addressing this, but I think that as long as everyone uses the RSS feeds on their blogs (which people don't even think twice about) it will not stop. You might want to write a post about how we can set our RSS to prevent this (if there is a way). Is there a plugin, or something?
Well, that's my 2 cents...
I agree with Lynn, I see nothing wrong with adding more value to a topic that someone on another site started, along with giving them credit for and a link back to their article or information.
RSS has all sorts of uses, it's whether or not it's used for EVIL purposes or not.
Lynn,
I had someone recommend a product called Utility Poster that generates articles when you enter keywords. Then you automatically insert it in your blog including the links to their site. There are some things that seem interesting, but in view of this diecussion both here and at Rosilands site, it leaves definite quetions in my mind. Have you seen it, and if so, what is your take on it? Thanks. Grace
I'm going to put a self link in the middle of all my articles from now on, then if it is auto-blogged elsewhere, at least I'll get a link back automatically.
This isn't even close to being correct, and whenever I find it, I go after them. I've shut down two websites because they were stealing my content. I use a copyright plugin that proves I wrote it, and of course when they steal my personal pictures that's crossing the line as well. I do both the Google & DMCA, and will continue going after these people.
For shame... totally agree with you on this one Lynn.
The idea of a RSS feed being an open invitation to steal content is crazy. We all get those spam trackbacks from content thieves that seem to think it's okay because they link back to the site. I never allow a trackback for those sites.
If someone wanted to share their content they would be submitting their posts as articles to article marketing sites hoping others will use it in exchange for links back to their site. I believe that's a bad idea today, even though it's still very popular. With all that content freely available it's hard to understand why anyone would violate someone's copyright when it's not going to do any better with the search engines.
It's important to check each site's Terms of Service (TOS) re: copyrights and using their content. Some sites intentionally syndicate content via RSS feeds and WANT webmasters to publish it. In fact, that's the basic business model for online press release distribution sites.
EZineArticles ALLOWS content syndication via RSS feeds as long as publishers follow their TOS -- publish the entire article and resource box,unchanged. See their TOS here: http://ezinearticles.com/terms-of-service.html
I think part of the thievery problem is that people make assumptions -- in both directions -- rather than checking the facts at the source and basing decisions and actions accordingly.