Someone copied my blog post word for word!
Not surprising since I’m an excellent writer who understands the fundamentals of blogging:
- Be great.
- Write great.
- Don’t make your site sketchy looking.
I had a very popular piece of content in particular aimed at women that ranked really well on my personal development blog.
This one post was getting 500 visitors a day in organic traffic (search and social shares) and was making $500 a month in affiliate commissions for a 47$ ebook I was promoting as an affiliate.
Copyscape discovered the culprit
You can check for copycats by doing a copyright search using Copyscape to see if anyone had copied the content I wrote for that site.
I discovered another lazy blogger had copied my popular blog post to about 75% of what I had written, making the other 25% new content of an offensive sexual nature.
Twisting the art I created, the helpful content women found valuable into something more adult oriented.
As such, It was go time. It’s fine if people quote your content, it’s even okay if they use a paragraph and link back to you for reference.
But to straight up rip off another persons work?
No way, that’s where I draw the line.
First, visit the website and email the blogger asking them to remove the content
You should first start off by politely asking them to remove the content. A lot of people are just clueless to this being a form of theft.
Much the same with with people using Google Image search and inadvertently stealing pictures and thinking it’s “no big deal.”
People do this with content as well.
We all know plagiarism is wrong, but we like to rationalize bad behavior because we’re just copying a little bit, it’s not like we’re copying the whole thing.
Email template to use
So visit the site and find a contact form or email to get in touch with the copycat blogger. Send a firm but polite email using this template:
Hello,
This article (name article) was lifted from a website I own and run (name website and the page the content is taken from). My site is copyrighted unfortunately so I would kindly ask you to remove the article within the next (whatever amount of days) days. Thank you.
In many instances, this will resolve any copycat issues. The copycat blogger will take down the content and you can move onto more important things.
However, if you don’t get any response, then it’s time to send a DCMA notice.
How to file a DCMA complaint notice
If you have made a good faith effort to contact a webmaster who has copied your content but they either did not comply with your request or never responded to your email you need to file a DMCA complaint with their web host.
- Do a whois search for the offending website.
- Look to see who their host is.
- Once you know who their host is, do a Google search “DMCA + name of web hosting company” or contact the web host and ask how to file a copyright infringement.
- Provide the necessary information for the complaint.
The web host company will process your complaint and you should have everything resolved within 3-5 days.
They will notify you via email as to the outcome.
If they determine that you were indeed infringed upon they will remove the offending content.
Want to see an example of the form you submit? This is the form you would fill out for Host Gator.
How do you copyright your website?
Anything you create and publish on your website is automatically copyrighted.
That means if you wish to republish an article, a picture or a video from another website you need permission first.
So, there is nothing specifically you have to do to copyright your website.
DCMA takedown notice conclusion
That’s it for this quick how-to for protecting your content from lazy copycats who can’t be creative enough to think for themselves.
Like always, make a good faith effort to reach out first and if that gets you nowhere, then send a DCMA takedown notice.
