Blue Mushrooms Affiliate Marketing » The BS Files

Plugins to protect WordPress blogs from sploggers

Sapphire — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:35:26 +0000

I’ve tried out a few plugins recently to stop sploggers from stealing my content. My favorite was ©Feed, but unfortunately it causes errors if you use it alongside any Feedburner redirecting plugin.That plugin does everything I want, otherwise – maybe someday it will work.

Now I’m using Anti-Feed Scraper Message, which is a simple plugin that allows you to insert any paragraph you want at the bottom of your post, as viewed by a feedreader. The message – like the one in ©Feed – is visible to all your readers, so remember this when you’re composing the message. I inserted a copyright notice and a digital fingerprint into mine. So far, this seems to be making sploggers want to stop using my content – the one splogged post I found since then was removed rather quickly once the blogger had a look at what his automated sploggy software had picked up.

I’m also using Anti-Leech, which I’ve recommended before. Today, for the first time, I found a stolen post from one of my other websites that had the AntiLeech graphic and everything. D’oh! I added an identifiable part of the URL to my list of user-agents who need to receive fake content, so any future splogging from the site should be amusing.

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on November 24, 2009 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

Yet another asshole splogger

Sapphire — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:35:58 +0000

Go check out RedButtonReviews - this asshole may be stealing your content. But I’m not nearly so upset this time, because look at the hilarity:

I installed the ©Feed plugin recently and changed my feed to excerpt only. Therefore he only got an excerpt and he got a clear copyright infringement notice, and a digital fingerprint I can search for via search engines to find my stolen content (this search function is built into the program, making it even easier for you). And he linked to me like crazy because the plugin sticks related posts in your feed, even on the excerpt version.

This turd has no contact page – surprise! – so I put my cease and desist into a comment. I mean, give me a break, he’s even scraped my copyright notice. How oblivious can you be?

I’m off to notify Google and get his pages removed. — Oh, no, wait. None of his pages that scraped MY articles are actually in Google. What a loser.

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on November 8, 2009 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

Another asshat splogging site

Sapphire — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:49:46 +0000

This assclown just sent me 18 trackbacks. By the time I clicked back to them, they were all coming up as 404s, but sure enough, he’d reposted my articles without permission. He even says in his sidebar that not all of these articles are his – some of them are feeds from other sites and he does not “try to own them.” Like that makes what he’s doing any more legal.

Go make sure he hasn’t stolen your content – his pages are ranking strangely high in Google for some reason. If your pages are in there, notify Google and send the asshat a Cease and Desist.

I wonder what made him take them down so quickly, though. Was it the Anti-Leech plugin giving them garbage instead of the actual post content? Or was it this little gem, which he definitely picked up?

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on November 6, 2009 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

Dealing with sploggers who steal your content

Sapphire — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:38:10 +0000

Recently, I discovered that some company blog had been stealing my articles and posting them on their own blog like they had written them themselves. One of their blog categories contained only one article that wasn’t mine, and it sounded familiar, and in the course of all this, they revealed that they think making your feed available means you’re inviting them to reproduce your content, which is ridiculous. That’s why I’m linking to the company below – you should go make sure none of your content has been stolen by them.

Anyway, here’s how I dealt with it.

The company didn’t have a contact form or email address on the blog, but they had a toll-free number. I called them and, with some difficulty, finally got email info from them.
I emailed them a Cease and Desist letter, which I will reproduce for you below, in case you ever need one.
I reported several of the stolen articles to Google.
I posted this little gem for their splogger to pick up in a few hours, if they didn’t comply.

And you know what really pisses me off? Google had been indexing their versions of my articles and leaving mine out. But let me tell you something: within ninety minutes, Google reindexed my versions of those articles and removed theirs. I’m not sure I’ve ever had anything that positive to say about Google, but I’m saying it now, with thanks.

Within that same time period, the company removed the articles. If they had not, I would have simply emailed them all to Google, time-consuming as that would have been, and contacted a lawyer. But since they did, I know that eventually Google will remove all their versions of my articles as they now come up as 404 pages.

Here’s the rather sarcastic response from the company:

Dear Blue Mushroom Administrator,

Please accept our sincere apology if you feel that we have infringed upon your rights.

I am sure at first glance it can be startling to see your own work on someone else’s website!

But rest assured that we were not copy/pasting your blog posts – but rather syndicating your content via the Feedburner.com RSS feed that you encourage people to sign up for on the homepage of your blog.

Since you have expressed dissatisfaction with us sending links back to your website via your feeds, we have promptly removed the feed from our site and no more of your posts will show up.

We wish you all the best with the sale of your website.

Sincerely,
Early to Rise Customer Support.

I responded with the following:

Every blog has a feed available. It is legally preposterous to infer from that that you have permission to repost it anywhere you like without proper credit. Besides, my website is clearly protected by Creative Commons, as you could see from the footer, and what you did clearly violated the terms:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Additionally, because YOUR versions of my articles were being indexed by Google and mine were not, there’s no telling what you’ve cost me in earnings through your unethical actions.

Since you have removed the posts quickly and I cannot in fact calculate what I might have earned, and because Google has responded quickly to my spam reports by removing your posts and reindexing my content, I will not pursue further legal actions at this time.

You really should educate yourselves on copyright law before attempting to administer a blog. This is your responsibility.

Their defense is absolutely ridiculous, but at least they removed the content. And now, here is the original C&D notice I sent them, which you can alter to suit your own situation as needed:

To whom it may concern:

1. I am the owner of the Website http://bluemushrooms.com. I am also the owner of the copyright in the material published on the Website.

The following is a list of JUST A FEW OF THE URL’s for my pages which have been copied on your site(s).

http://bluemushrooms.com/commenters-who-want-all-your-time/

http://bluemushrooms.com/march-2009-earnings-my-new-site-and-my-new-venture/

http://bluemushrooms.com/breaking-up-with-adsense/

http://bluemushrooms.com/preparing-your-site-for-a-digg/

http://bluemushrooms.com/feedburner-google-migration-is-an-unmitigated-disaster/

http://bluemushrooms.com/changes-in-direction/

Your entire “online business ideas” category is nothing but a reposting of my articles, as you can see from this page:

http://www.etr-online.com/tips/making-money/online-business-ideas/

2. This wholesale misappropriation of my copyright works has not been authorized by me and is an infringement of my exclusive rights as copyright owner. The infringement is also flagrant.

3. In the circumstances I demand that you immediately:

3.1.    remove all aforesaid infringing material from your Website(s), and notify me in writing that you have done so;

3.2    undertake in writing to desist from using any of my copyrighted work in future without prior written authority from me.

3.3    post a written apology on your website.

I await to hear from you by no later than close of business on October 28, 2009 failing which equivalent letters will be sent to:

* Your Web Host

* Your Domain Registrar

* Legal Support at Google and other Search Engines.

This is written without prejudice to my rights, all of which are hereby fully and expressly reserved.

Sincerely,

BlueMushrooms Administrator

And no, of course they didn’t post the apology. If this doesn’t work, then your next step would be to do what you’ve said in the last bit there:

Go to WhoIs and find their webhost, if you can. This is not always simple, but very often they’re hosted with someone reputable who will remove a site as quickly as they can confirm your claim of copyright ownership. This deprives the splogger of income, and of services they have paid for.
Ditto on finding the domain registrar. I’ve never done this one myself and have no idea whether they will intervene, but I know you agree to follow the law by owning a domain, and this is against all international copyright law.
Getting help from Google. There are two ways to go about this. What I did today, and what I prefer, is to report the articles as “dupe content.” Or, if you use Google Webmaster tools, you can report it here. They say you’re more guaranteed to get a result if you use the Webmaster Tools form. But ws demonstrated today, Google reacts very quickly even when you use the first link, as I did, and this also deprives the splogger of traffic income. The page may remain up, but no one will find it via Google anymore, and that cuts out a whole lotta search traffic. Another way to go – and this is more of a pre-suing move – is report it to Google as a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That’s more involved and can’t be done by email, so it takes more time. But it sets up a helluva paper trail. I’d consider this option “the big guns” short of launching a lawsuit.
- Be sure to include the link to your original content in the “Additional Details” box so they can confirm that you were first on the scene with that content.

All in all, very good results. When you’re dealing with a pure splogger that’s not attached to anyone who has any reputation to lose, they will probably ignore a Cease and Desist, and it might be extremely hard to track them down and sue them. In that case, I’d go straight to Google. I’ve done that a couple of times and the page was promptly removed from Google, which at least puts a dent in the benefits of splogging.

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on October 29, 2009 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

A little present for my spammers

Sapphire — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:52:55 +0000

We are a company who plagiarizes other people’s blogs to build our own, as you can tell by reading this and wondering why we would reveal such a thing about ourselves. The answer is that we unthinkingly copy and paste from a blog called Blue Mushrooms with no respect for copyrights or concerns about plagiarism. This might cause you to question our integrity in all areas.

This post is a little something I wrote for one of my copy-paste spammers, who has stolen pretty much every post on this site and reprinted them without permission or proper credit. They should pick this one up in a few hours as well.

ETA: Before doing this, I sent the company a Cease and Desist letter via email. They actually removed the blog posts that had been copied from my site pretty quickly, which is surprising. When you’re dealing with a spammer, no threat of legal action fazes them. But when the blog is owned by a company or semi-reputable individual who, I’m guessing, hires someone to write content for them not realizing the content might be cut and paste spam, you can get some results this way. I’ve issued two C&D letters in the past week, and both resulted in the content being removed in a timely fashion.

But if you’re on WordPress, you might avoid the whole problem by using the AntiLeech plugin. It won’t stop a real human from copying and pasting, but it is supposed to detect splog robots and serve them up useless content with links back to your site and the plugin author’s site. I can’t say for sure that it works (how would you test that?), but I’ve had it on two of my most popular blogs for a while now, and I’ve found very few instances of copying (and you’d expect them to be copied a lot more compared to this little blog).

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on October 27, 2009 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

Feedburner stuck on zero

Sapphire — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:58:14 +0000

I’ve had my doubts about Feedburner’s accuracy before, but this is ridiculous.

I know I’ve neglected you guys lately, but you’re not actively boycotting me, are you? Even bots register as 3-5 users on a site that sits untouched for years.

(All my sites are showing zeros, so there’s no way this is right. I’m miffed, too, because I had some big traffic yesterday and was hoping to see big feed numbers.)

Methinks we could use a more reliable service for tracking our feeds. What was that one we had years ago that was so good? Oh, right – Feedburner: The Pre-Google buyout.

I’m just sayin’.

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on August 12, 2008 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

Why people who blog about affiliate marketing eventually find better things to do

Sapphire — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:01:18 +0000

This is a really disheartening niche, people. You know why?

Recently I found a WordPress plugin that lets you see what people are searching for when they use the search box on your site. Awesome! Now I have new ideas what to write about. It works great on Project Mai Tai, where people search for stuff I hadn’t thought of writing about.

Here… at least half the searches are other affiliate bloggers searching for their names and domain names. Vanity searches.

And people wonder why affiliate marketing bloggers get stingy about giving out links and the secrets to their success. And why this niche has a bad name. It’s because everyone in it, by the nature of what it’s about, is out for themselves. Those of us who aren’t pretty damn selfish are the ones who end up stuck making a couple hundred a year.

I’m still sorting all this out in my head. I hate to say it, but there are days – many of them, lately – where I want to just sell this domain and Chilly and get away from this niche. Just build my sites and make my money instead of talking about it. It’s just so discouraging to talk about it and realize no one’s listening* – they’re just checking in to see if they got mentioned anywhere, or to see what your keywords are, or to dissect your site or try to find your other sites so they can have a good ol’ snoop around those.

*Except for Empress, Stu and a handful of others.

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on May 21, 2008 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

I swear I checked that

Sapphire — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:08:35 +0000

The feeds on this site and Affiliate Marketing Journal have been screwy ever since I created the new blog. I checked all my feed links over and over when I set up the new blog. Then when I noticed everyone had dumped Blue Mushrooms overnight and gone over to Affiliate Marketing Journal, I thought, “I must have mixed the codes up. They can’t all have instantly decided to do that.” I checked the Feedburner plugin, the code in the themes, etc. I clicked stuff and saw where it actually went.

And yet somehow Blue’s feed links have been directing you to AMJ’s feed, and AMJ’s feed wasn’t even forwarding to Feedburner.

Ahem. I take full responsibility, but as God is my witness, I have no idea how that happened.

If you want to read Affiliate Marketing Journal, where I yammer on about my earnings this month and mistakes I make (you know, like this), then please make sure you’re subscribed to the AMJ feed (email subscription available on site). If you want to read Blue Mushrooms, where I talk about stuff that’s actually valuable – tips, tricks, solutions, ideas – then you need to make sure you’re subscribed to the Blue feed. The Blue feed is called “Blue Mushrooms” and the AMJ feed is called “Sapphire’s Affiliate Marketing Journal” – that should help you figure out if you’ve got the one(s) you want.

My Feedburner stats about two days from now are going to be interesting to see.

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on March 11, 2008 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

Anybody else’s income swirling the drain?

Sapphire — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:23:25 +0000

My income is just dropping lately. It’s getting worse every month. Anyone else seeing this on their own sites?

I’m starting to wonder about the US economy and whether it’s impacting affiliate sales. I know if I was in danger of defaulting on a mortgage, I wouldn’t be buying much stuff online.

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on March 8, 2008 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.

Twitter – okay, I’ll give it a shot

Sapphire — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:17:39 +0000

I don’t get Twitter. But people keep “following” me, so I’ve decided to give it a try. If you’re interested, I’m bluemushrooms.

I have no idea what to tell you to expect. I’ve updated three times in the past, um, year or so since I joined.

[This] article originally appeared on BlueMushrooms.com on March 2, 2008 and is copyrighted. If you are reading it this notice anywhere but in your feedreader, it has been stolen by a splogger. Digital Fingerprint: 4a918e5e547a9aae171ee15c51e9e595.