Blogging is not that easy as it looks from outside. Once you explore it yourself you will come to know that it is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. But if you blog with a proper approach then you won’t face much problems. But if you start a blog just by reading some fancy story of “How I made $10k from blogging”, your blog and even you will reach nowhere. This has become like a trend today. Thousands of blogs are being created on a daily basis of which only 2-3 blogs are worth reading. And in this madness of ‘earning $10k per month’ they are left short of ideas. This is the point where all this copy content from other blogs take place. Today I will tell you about some unseen aspects of this very topic.
Why a Blogger Copies ? What Happens After That ??
Some dumb people, just for the sake of posting on their blogs, copy full articles from others blogs. They don’t think that the owner of the host blog might have done some serious work to just create that post. Such people think that copying the most popular article from the successful blogs will give them high traffic and some search engine ranking. But they don’t know that search engines are much more smarter than such copy-cats. Search engines are able to differentiate between what’s original and what’s duplicate. Even if a blog gets some high amount of traffic, then also he won’t be able to earn a good amount of money. All the biggest monetizing programs demand quality content and don’t accept blogs not fitting in this criteria. Thus the dream of making “$10k per month” is shattered.
A different Perspective of Plagiarism (Copying From other Blogs)
Now let’s see upon it in a different way. A blogger, no matter how successful he is, at last he is a human. And we all know humans are not perfect. Our brains cannot produce new ideas everytime. And if you are the only author of your blog, this will be the greatest hurdle between you and your success. At this time, impatient people are bound to make mistakes like copying from other blogs. If a blogger wants to embrace the success than he should not produce content that is already posted somewhere else. So what he should do at such crucial time?? Simple, give the due credits. If you have liked some post on other blogs and want to share it then you should give the credits to its original author. Any author would never object to this thing. Make this as a habit. It will never harm you, it has never harmed anyone.
I will tell you something. A few days back, I was reading an article on Problogger and I saw that Darren Rowse has used a quote from a post on other blog. He even gave credits of a simple quote to its original author. And I am telling you to give the credits of a post. See around the biggest blogs, you will always find the credit links in the posts, maybe in the beginning or at the end. Some great bloggers are also providing credit links to even the images used. This is not possible if you are using Google images as you won’t know which one is original. Even I use Google for images as it is easy. But I emphasize on using Flickr or anything similar for images.
Final Words
Always give the credits to the original author. You will take a few minutes to copy the article which might have been produced after some serious researching and hard work. So never copy. If you like the idea of the post, write it on your blog in your own words and don’t forget to provide the credit link. I hope that this might have proved helpful to you guys. Happy Blogging :D
Arbaz Khan is a passionate blogger who loves to write about technology updates, social media, blogging and computers on his own blog TechBreach.net
If I copy an article to my site and give the source, is that not marked as duplicate content and decrease my rangking?
Many thanks Ileane with regard to visiting and also causing the treasured opinion. You happen to be proper concerning Reddit. I’m sorry i didn’t remember to bring up iStockphoto. I simply needed to share a note which a number of writers actually give credit on the pictures they will use within their particular article.
Yes one should never copy content or copyright images. This will reject their applications for adsense and the author of the images may file a case against them also!!
we can create a creative commons license(modification is allowed with a credit) and can add in your web widget. we can embed copy-scape or can add DMCA protected badge to add some awareness to the scammer. Most of the people copying dont know copyright and they dont know to make original contents. That’s why they never understand the hardwork put by author or credit the author.
ooh…i write only unique articles on my Blog So i have No worry…but thnxx for writing……
Hi
I see very few persons write on their own. Everybody takes some ideas from different sites and make a unique piece. Now you cant expect anyone to write from his own on every topic. Practically this is not possible. There are millions of sites, and if you check all the site, you can see that information is all same. But we should try to make it as much unique as possible giving our own thoughts or verdict. And i completely agree with what you have mentioned in the article. Giving credit is very important.
Sanjib
Yes. Whatever you said that is correct. A blogger should not at all become jealous on other bloggers work. He should produce his own genuine work to world. This is true salute to our job.
Well said Pratik.
I am happy that you liked my post :)
Been tempted a few times here and there (it’s not easy being a one man show) but always ended up staying original. Though, I’ll admit. I have copied images, but like you said, you can never know made them (if you’re using Google Images, that is). New to blogging and all but in my 2 months (and some help from sessions on ‘intense Googling’) Blogging is not as easy as it looks.
Mind giving my blog a look Arbaz?
Some feed-back would be much appreciated.
Hi Mirsub Ali,
Whatever you did was nice. Getting over your temptation is a tough task and you did it. I am glad that you liked the article.
Coming over to giving feedback to your blog, you must ask Ammar Ali, the owner of Allbloggingtips, as he is well versed in all this stuff and he would give a rather professional advice.
If you have any further queries, msg me. All queries are welcome :)
Yup thats true and ya if i am helping you then i should say to refer this great post with ideas of writting
Hey Deepak, I don’t understand what you are talking about.
The above article is about copying content and you gave the link of keyword research.
Why is it so ???
Thanks Raheemullah Khan !!!!
I am happy that you found it useful :)
Nice arbaz khan I read your post first time but it was written in a nice manner thanks for sharing ;)
Blogs should never be copied. If a blogger is running out of ideas, give it a break but don’t copy. There is no point in discrediting someone else’s work just to fill up few pages on your blog.
Yes completely agree with you.
Thanks for stopping by, Chitra :)
I had some issue with an image that I used from Flickr. I didn’t realize that you are not allowed to download the image and store it on your server. It was an article by a guest blogger and it’s really ironic because personally I never use images from Flickr. I buy rights to my images from iStock photo so I never have to worry about reading the Flickr terms. When the photographer came by and left a not so nice comment I immediately sent him an email and apologized. I removed his image and replaced it with one from iStock. It’s really an interesting concept, because he didn’t want me to take the image down, he really just wanted me to embed the image from Flickr. Unfortunately it didn’t go that way, but I will not be using any Flickr images no matter what! LOL
Well, I understand both sides of that. Depending on the creative commons license he set for the image, he may have been concerned that the image would be modified in some way. Some images are freely licensed for modification, only requiring proper credit and a link back to the original. But I know with some of my stuff, I’d rather have people link to it where it is – that way, I still have control over it. Buying rights is safer, generally, Ms. Ileane – and it’s a good thing to do, because the people who create those images deserve to see some benefit from their work. (You ever buy from Shutterstock? :) I have images over there!)
Hi Holly, any reason you don’t put your images on iStock? I’m pretty happy with their service and I like that they give me free images, audio and video at least once a month, sometimes more. I’m not shopping around for a new vendor right now.
Ileane, it was a combination of things – first, Shutterstock was just starting up when I joined, and it was fairly easy to get a foot in the door. I don’t recall the specifics, but I also liked their TOS better. They were quicker to respond with approvals/rejections. They seemed more personally vested in growing their contributor community. I haven’t submitted new images there in a while, and I know that things change.
Thanks Ileane for stopping by and leaving your precious comment. You are right about Flickr. I am sorry that I forgot to mention iStockphoto. I just wanted to convey a message that some bloggers even give credits to the images they use in their post.
You ought to read this: “Copyright Essentials for Writers” – it’s not true that you can just copy a whole post or a photo, give credit, and that be enough. It’s not enough. Plagiarism is ONE FORM of copyright violation (the worst, since you are claiming the work as your own, and not giving credit); however, copyright violation occurs any time you use a living author’s work without the author’s permission. And it can hurt you: It can get your site taken down, in most countries. Because if an author complains by filing a DMCA notice and shows proof that the work is his, and the ISP does nothing, it also becomes liable. So don’t do it. Quoting a small portion of a post AND giving credit won’t get you into trouble; most bloggers will appreciate that, especially if you include a link back to the original. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that people who earn their living by writing are going to automatically be flattered and happy if you take their work and use it without permission and/or payment.
The article you wrote about the copyright is really amazing, explaining each and everything in detail. But I just wanted to convey a simple message to my fellow bloggers to respect other bloggers’ hard work and give them the credits they are worth of. At least we can do that on our part.
And thanks for the article, it is really awesome :)
Thanks, Arbaz. I just wanted to add that caution, because some bloggers might read your post and think (incorrectly) that they can copy a whole blog post, no problem, so long as they give the original author credit.
I am not saying that way. I already mentioned that copying complete post is a bad idea, but there are some blogs providing amazing widgets for blogger and even wordpress and there complete work is been presented by some copycats on their blog without any credit link. I kept that point in mind while writing about that line.
“Amazing” is such a nice word. Not the one I normally use for some of those utilities I think you’re alluding to. ;)
Writers also have “amazing” ways of getting even (and no one wants their site taken down). If you’re not easily offended by four-letter words that don’t mean “amazing,” you may find this amusing: (I did, eventually, get this particular copycat’s sites removed – 3 or 4 of them, in fact – before he stopped messing with me. Don’t feel too bad for him, either – his copyright violations were completely intentional and his name and IP addresses were prominent on several well known blacklists. He was unrepentant.)
I just used the word “amazing” because the widgets they provide are really amazing. This is the work of some genius and we should always appreciate them.
Its not bad thing to pick an idea from some article but copying each and every word is really a silly thing to do.
You said right Zeeshan. A blogger will read many blogs in his niche to get an idea about the new post but copying everything is a very bad practice.
I think that’s a bad habit and illegal o do. You should always respect and acknowledge others creativity.
Yes Sumon, you are absolutely right :)
Hi Arbaz,
really nice article…
smooth n to the point..
Its true that by copying others article one cannot get success in long term.
We should respect others effort as well.
Thanks Sandeep. I am very happy you liked my article :)
It is truly hard to write completely 100% unique articles any more. But it would be foolish to “Scrape” a blog and copy/paste it! But you can work on preventing people or creating a link back to your blog by making sure you have articles you have written or a link to your main site in every article you produce.
I know there are a couple free tools online as well to check and see if any content you have written has been copied. (Of course… I can’t remember them at the moment)
The simple answer is “no” don’t copy peoples content. If you do mention a quote or an article – make sure to credit the author! It gives them a backlink.. and who knows you might get a mention on their blog as well!
Completely agree with you Jason….
One should never copy anything, if such a situation arises a blogger should always make a habit to give the due credits.
Few bloggers would object to that! If done properly, they wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on (brief quote, cite source, give backlink – who in their right mind would object to that?)
Giving credit after copying a whole post without permission? That’s a whole different matter. Citing the source only protects you from an accusation of plagiarism – it doesn’t save you from a charge of copyright violation (it just sort of proves it).
I always try to give credit the source from where I get the content or picture. I think it should be every blogger’s duty to respect other site owners
Yes Ahsan, its every blogger’s duty to give the credits to the original author. He might have worked hard to create it.