Writers and Publishers Can Keep Content Safe With Copyscape Services

Protect Yourself From Plagiarism, Re-authoring, and Use of Your Work Without Citation 

The threat of plagiarism has never been higher than it is today.  The threat of research, fiction, nonfiction, or any type of written information being copied, pasted, and assigned a false author has never been easier.  The copy/paste routine is a much simpler option for a lot of unscrupulous folks out there who don’t have the know how or are just plain lazy to create the same content.  Though I am not certain I'd label Copyscape a watchdog group quite yet, they do offer the ability to find out where writing has been stolen.  The recourse against the theft of your content may be up to you.

Note: I like to pass on great Internet resources to my readers.  Every single one of them, up to this point has been free, if I am remembering correctly.  This is a sort of hybrid: the service is a paid one, but it also offers a free download that is darn near as useful as the service itself. 

I’m not an affiliate of this or any of the websites, communities, or services I scour the internet for, to bring the best to my readers.  I just like finding cool stuff and sharing it!  Social Tsunami is my business so I’ll be talking more about that as the days go on, but that is, I hope, obviously different.  So be assured I am not a sell out.  Yet, anyway. . . .

Now on to the good stuff: protecting your writing and content online, and searching for instances where it has already been reproduced in a non-cited, unauthorized, or just plain plagiarized, re-authored manner.

Copyscape is a Web service dedicated to protecting your content.  Simply copy and paste the URL of your article, homepage, squeeze page, whatever you are concerned about, into the search engine.  It will scour the web for instances where your words have been duplicated.  If your name is not cited, and you did not sign a contract allowing someone to reproduce your material in the manner it has been, there is a problem.  There is also a free search  available if you would like to take the service for a test spin.

This is a great way to make sure all of your hard work isn’t making someone else Adsense revenue or helping them present themselves as an expert on subjects that they clearly aren’t.  Likewise, your stories belong to you, and shouldn't be out winning other people contest money or book deals.  It should be clear enough, but I seriously discourage anyone from tossing a completed manuscript for a book all over the web for a variety of reasons, even if it is copyrighted.  This can get messy with critiquing groups, editors, and people you think you can trust.  However, this is a complex topic better covered in another post. 

The paid service (starting at $4.99/mo.) not only increases the search capabilities, but also has the option of periodic scans of content you put into Copyscape’s database of your work.  They will notify you and tell you who the culprit is automatically, even if you don't think to make a search.  This can save a tremendous amount of time.  If you find someone duplicating or using your work unscrupulously, you are protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  

This is a great service people in a variety of professions: content developers, webmasters, freelance writers, novelists, and even teachers who grade essays should check up on it.  One more tool in the tech-toolbox, but that’s not the best part for us bargain shoppers.

Free Tool Alert: Copyscape offers a variety of banners you can put pin on your work to deter others from plagiarizing it.  The few seconds it will take to input an image at the bottom of your blog posts, paste in the footer of webpages, or append to a full length article you submit to an editor for publishing (usually before you are actually paid), can save you a lot of heartache and potentially a lot of money and time pursuing plagiarism later on.  

So take some precautions, especially when they are free.  Start using the Copyscape Banners whether you have the service or not.  It will make you look savvy, and the rest of the world think twice about ripping you off.

And as always at Freelancing To Freedom, we believe free is a pretty good price.

Need Newsletters? Free Email Marketing With Mailchimp Is Finally Here

I happened to recall, as I cruised chrome for good things to share with the world, my desire to have a free service that will manage a newsletter.  This is big news, and many of you know that having a huge newsletter following can mean big profits if it is targeted to the product or service you offer.  Bottom line:  Opt-in emails are people who care about what you have to say, and want to hear more of it!

Enough with the sell, there is finally a site out there that will give you a very reasonable following and mailer service for FREE:  http://www.mailerchimp.com.  It's free application will collect up to 2,000 subscribers and allow 12,000 emails per month; this means that a full subscriber list can create 6 newsletters a month.  This sounds like a lot of power, and it is.  It also probably sounds like a lot of limitations, and this is true as well.  Your ability to use this service depends upon the popularity of your other platforms, as you will have to bring subscribers to a custom page link to enter their information.

As with any good newsletter or emailer there should be value to the subscriber.  You can do this best by creating organized and visually pleasing information and links to expanded articles.

Tip:  These articles do not necessarily have to be written by you.  Find related articles that you found enlightening, write a summary of them, and connect the reader with the full article via a link.  Here you not only look humble, but well versed in the exchange of ideas and information.  You technically steal someone else's work, but both sides win.  The author of your featured article receives traffic from you, and your readers forgive the fact that you as an expert didn't write the article yourself but still located it in the dumping grounds of public access information available online.

Try Mailchimp out for yourself, if you have enough people listening to consider an online mailer a good use of your time.  If you have a following on your blog, Twitter, or otherwise, you may just increase your readership for free, exponentially.

Tip:  Remember that sharing is caring, and increasing your following needs well placed widgets where people can share cool things (like your newsletter) with others.  If your newsletter doesn't lead to more people taking notice of your hard work then it is not time well spent.

Good luck and good gathering, I might one day be one of your 2,000 subscribers, so follow these guidelines and don't disappoint: sell yourself first, and links to the information your readership wants second.  

Aggregate marketing isn't about taking credit for other people's work.  It's about knowing quality when you see it, and your subscribers will admire that and appreciate you taking the best of the web right to their doorstep.

How To Get Writing Sooner: 3 Efficiency Tips For Writers and Entrepreneurs

Identifying Useful Activities That Have Gone Overboard
Time wasters are everywhere, but not everything we do that keeps us off task is a waste.  Hours can be spent on perfectly necessary projects such as maintaining a connection through social media and email, or honing our taste in literature by reading.  Reading tips from other writers can also help you make connections, and is a form of continuing education (though you'll never receive a grade, and I wouldn't recommend putting that you read Writer's Digest on a resume).  So here are some thoughts on how to stay productive while keeping yourself connected and informed.  Most solutions have a bit of Psychology and self-help included, so get ready to use a little metacognition (thinking about thinking) or even "listening to thinking" to better organize your time.  I'm sure after reading the following list you will have no trouble identifying things that are occupying too much time.

Time Wasters and How to Manage Them

1. Email:  I have three or four email addresses that I check frequently, and taking the time to sign in and out of them can get excessive over the course of a week or a month.  This time adds up quickly.                     Solution:  Use forwarding to check all your emails at once with a single "master" email you check once to see what was sent to all the other accounts.  
2. Reading:  Reading is an important part of writing and is certainly time well spent, but when you can't put down the novel you're engrossed in or the magazine with the fabulous advice, it becomes counterproductive.  Solution:  Keep a journal of your peaks and troughs of efficiency and arousal.  Use the times you are most "with it" to write, and times when you are not as energetic on more passive endeavors such as research, enjoying a novel, or gathering tips in magazines, blogs, and websites.  There is great information out there, but if your all strategy and no action, you won't get very far.                                               

1. Facebook/Twitter:  Though I use Facebook much more than Twitter, they are both a distraction when used for more than networking or sharing your work with potential readers (or clients, if you have a business).  These Internet powerhouses can help a great deal when creating a platform that is free and attracting people interested in seeing what you are doing (let me rephrase that: people are interested in how what you are doing CAN HELP THEM).  But, as most people know, it can be a serious distraction when you really should be writing and creating content.  Solution:  No two people are going to have the same solution to dealing with the engrossing distractions of social media, but remember advice I gave earlier about peaks and troughs in arousal and performance.  Use the times you are at your best to maximize your content, write your novel, or do the brain crunching stuff that really takes a lot of mental power....                                       

Because I think we can all agree that checking our Facebooks isn't exactly the most demanding thing in the world.  The same typically goes for email, and emails that are important should be given thought and consideration.  Draft important emails (if deadlines and time constraints allow) when you are feeling energetic and "on it".

So don't stop reading, connecting, and building your platform.  Put these activities into perspective and make sure you use your waking hours as efficiently as you can.

What other time wasters can you think of?  How do you deal with them?  Help us all out and tell us in a comment.

Some articles are better than others

As a writer for Factoidz for the last several weeks, I've had an opportunity to make a little money and look at which of my articles are receiving the most attention from readers.  In the process I've learned a couple of things about what it takes to make an article a serious traffic generator.  But here, I'd like to make a few notes on what went wrong with the other articles, pose some questions to my readers, and look into the future a bit.

Problems with article keywords
The first thing that comes to mind when I consider my articles that aren't getting hits is my state of mind when I wrote them.  I usually write all night and I don't think this schedule is really as predictable as waking up every morning for the quality of my writing.  I think the articles that aren't getting traffic are written fairly well, but by the time I was done with them I was exhausted.  This didn't leave me much energy for the last step which is selecting all of my keywords.  The process of choosing keywords is probably just like using the "Labels" box in blogger.  You fill it with enough words that search engines can get a good idea of what your article relates to, but not too many that you get flagged.  By not spending enough time choosing good keywords I was pretty much guaranteed that these articles wouldn't be looked at by very many people.

(Interesting side note: adding words like "Walmart, Martha Stewart, or CNN" just because a lot of people make searches on them may positively effect your ratings.  Another term for this is "Black Hat" SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  Black hat tactics try to drive traffic using unrelated but popular keywords to describe their page.  When people search on these unrelated topic, they may happen to click on the article, adding another hit to the counter.  White hat SEO involve honest and legitimate ways to attract people without misleading or violating a search engines Terms of Use.)

A question for my readers
One of my articles is about URL redirecting services, and it is here I have a question to pose to my readers.  A URL redirecting or shortening service allows users to create short links of their own to other content on the internet instead of including long hundreds of characters long URLs.  The google URL shortener is called Goog.le and another popular service is Bit.ly.  So aside from the obvious keywords such as "URL shortener", what is the best keyword to use for something like Goog.le or Bit.ly?  Do you leave the period out of the entry (i.e. Bitly instead of Bit.ly)?  That isn't an option with Goog.le; without the period there is no way to tell the difference between the company and it's shortening service.

Onward and upward
Of the little money I have made so far, I see a huge percentage coming from articles that have titles offering advice on how to use some of the major players in social media.  Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google,  and LinkedIn are becoming more important to nearly ever type of business every day; and writing helpful articles for people to better use these websites can be big bucks if you do it right.  Utilities like URL shorteners are great, but you will have to wait for the nickels and dimes to start rolling in if you write about them before they reach their height of popularity.

Before I leave you, here is some food for thought.  After watching two articles tank and another continue to generate a steady stream of hits, I can't stress enough the importance of choosing an appropriate title and keywords.  My next step is to start using Google Analytics to gather more detailed information on my articles' traffic, and also choose subjects and topics that people will want to read.  Many companies offering freelance gigs will help you out by giving you lists of hot keywords.  Sticking to these lists and writing useful relevant content will almost guarantee you some exposure.  But, as of the time this is written, I cannot locate this supposed list on Factoidz and they have not answered my repeated requests to help me locate this list.  If I find it in the future, you can be assured I will share this secret cleverly hidden in yet another terribly designed website.

Happy keyword hunting, and good posting.