One of the first things I want to address as this blog transforms into an information blog for aspiring writers will be sharing and duplication. It is also one of my biggest pet peaves.
What's the difference?
Thats a loaded question, The simple answer is, it's the difference between getting search engines to love you, or flag and/or ban your site from future inclusions in search results.
Why, I see duplicate articles many places?
That may be true, but duplicating material to publish in more than one place on the internet, especially if it is word for word, does nothing to benefit you, or the site you are writing for, in essence, it spoils rankings, gets you flagged by search bots, and knocks your credibility out the window.
If you look closely, you may or may not notice that certain words or phrases have been changed. This helps, but essentially, when search bots spider sites, they take in account every word and phrase that has been repeated, and compare them to everything else they spider. Therefore, if the engines see this often, rankings for the sites go down, and may esentially fall off all together.
This happened to me this year. I accept writers for my sites who would like to send in submissions, and like to make a name for themselves by having their work published, while learning the ropes. After more than a year of working on the rankings for one of my sites, one writer in particular, who had never written for anyone before, and only had experience writing personal rants in a blog on a social network, began sending in articles for my music sites. At first things went fairly well, but then, amoung some of the problems I had with them, they began sending the same articles to several different sites online, word for word. I tried to explain this concept over and over, but to no avail. Either this person was to dense to understand simple rules, or they just did not give a flying you know what.
After months of trying to make this person understand this simple concept, and months of excuses, rudeness, disrespect, and more, plus emails that clearly stated more than once that this WAS NOT because I did not want them writing for someone else, in fact I encouraged it, it's called networking, I finally had enough and told them to move right along in the nicest way possible. Unfortunately, I did not give them the boot quick enough, because my rankings fell almost 50% in the time that this was going on. In February of this year I discovered 5, count them, 5 blogs that they had just created. Guess what, each blog had exactly ONE of the articles that were submitted to my site, word for word. Now what did this imbecile plan on doing, did they plan to create a new blog for each article they wrote.
So, with that said, what is the proper way to submit an article that has already been posted somewhere else?
Welcome to the world of social network sharing! It is so simple even a caveman can do it, or a dense "would be" writer ;-)
Almost everywhere you go on the net now, you see it. The little link or icon that says SHARE THIS! What, no link like that anywhere. Guess what, that still doesn't make it right to duplicate material you have already offered and published to someone elses site.
But it's MY WORK!!
Not once you submit it, then it is mine, or whoever you send it to. Of course it still belongs to you, but regardless, owning a car, does not give you the right to run a person over, nor hand your car over to an unlicensed driver so they can run someone over. Altho you may own it, and altho you may want to submit the same article to other publications, did you know that you could actually get yourself in trouble doing that. I'll bet you did not. You can get blackballed, or even sued if you are caught doing that by the wrong publication. There is a proper way to do this.
So, back to sharing. What if there is not a share option? Then we use what is called a leader, or some people who are less savey may call it a teaser. Whatever you call it, this would be the ONLY proper way to share your work in more than one place. Here is an example:
I wrote a 500 word article on the music business. I want to publish this in more than one place. I take the first paragragh or 2, and then I ask people to read the rest of the article "here", and I link them back to the ORIGINAL article, that would be the first place you sent it for publication. This is the ONLY way duplication is acceptable. Pretty simple huh?
Most large companies who accept writers submissions will make you sign an agreement that if you send them an original article, that you can not publish it anywhere else. I work for a few places like that, but they pay out good money for my articles, so I don't mind this at all. The ones I work with that I do not have such a contract with, allow you to share, but will penilize you or even "fire" you if you do not share in the proper format.
Hope this little post helps clear a few things up about why duplicating is bad for everyone, and why sharing is good for all.
One more piece of advice, if someone gives you the opportunity to get some recognition by allowing you to send in copy for publication, do have some respect.
You are there to learn, and they are doing YOU a favor. Be polite rather than rude, respectful, rather than disrespectfull, have some humbleness instead of becoming prematurely big headed, or pig headed for that matter. Don't burden and badger the person giving you the opportunity with your silly personal dramas, nor tell them what you think they should be doing.
Remember, the people you screw over while trying to step on and over them while rushing your way to "famedom", will be the same people that you will meet on your way down. Try to learn from someone who gives you an opportunity, and don't backstab and screw over people that have helped you. It is inevitable that life has it's ups and downs, and when you meet that same person on the way back down, you want to be able to ask them for help, not have them laugh at your misfortune.
Play like a pro, if you want to be a pro!
Here is a piece of advice for publishers and creators alike. Don't tell anyone what your plans or goals are before you get a chance to see them through. I made that mistake also, and that person took those ideas, and ran elsewhere with them. Posuers are everywhere, (a word I like) and they will take your ideas in a heartbeat. Hold your ideas and your creativity close to your heart untill you are ready to share them with the entire world!
Now, go write something!
***************************************
If your on the East Coast, be sure to sign up for
MusicRVA Social Network!
And Be sure to sign up for the new Sojournstar Music Network!
and if you want to make money while having fun and promoting your band, music or business, then you must
Join me at Weblo Virtual World for Fun & Profit!
