Zen Garden > Article Authors - WARNING - You Are Being Ripped Off Big Time by Unscrupulous Website and Ezine Owners

Article WARNING - All article authors know that spending time writing articles is an effective way to draw a steady stream of free traffic to their own websites. But are the authors of these articles getting full credit for them? I suspect that the answer is NO!

The established convention is - you write an article and you allow it to be "picked up" (copied) by webmasters and ezine owners on two conditions. These are:

1. no alterations whatsoever
2. a LIVE link back to your designated point of origin (usually your website)

Well - here's NEWS for you! Many so-called "article" websites are NOT complying with this convention. They carry your article, make your LIVE link DEAD then surround YOUR work with Google Adsense advertisements so that THEY make money. They do not want visitors to their article farms to click away from your article to your site. No. They want the only escape from the page to be via a Google Adsense advert that they make money from. How insidious is that?

I have been doing random searches of several of my most popular articles - ones that have had thousands of views - and I am finding DEAD links all over the place. Do a search yourself and you will undoubtedly find exactly the same thing is happening to you.

Many of these rogue sites have no Google PR ranking yet. This indicates that they are fairly new and haven't earned a ranking. However, they are carrying 1000's of articles. One that I am investigating has over 100,000 articles. This would have to be a case of Google Adsense at its very worst. Greed has taken over and the owners of these sites are reaping the reward of all the hard work that article writers like you and me are doing. Basically, they are stealing copyright for personal gain.

Worse, some of these sites do not contain any email address or site administration information for you to make a complaint should you catch them out. That does not deter me. I go to places like www.alexa.com or www.whois.com and find out who runs the site and their email address then I email them with a short message like this:

"You people are using one of my articles - (insert URL of article here).

You are not displaying a live link back to my site. You know that this is one of the rules for displaying content. You are also displaying Google Adsense ads around my article. This means that you are attempting to make money from my work with no credit back to me. That is unfair.

Please make the link live or delete the article from your data base.

Please reply back to me with your actions.

While you are at it, if you are displaying any more of my many articles you'd best fix them too - or delete them. I will be checking on this tomorrow. Failure to take action will see this matter escalated. Thank you."

Check your own articles - particularly your popular ones. They are the articles that unscrupulous people like this target because they know that they are proven traffic pullers. That is what they want for their Google Adsense click throughs. I believe that these article farm sites are simply raiding the well-known reputable article sites for their material.

I intend to make a complaint to Google itself if these sites ignore my warnings. Then there would be a very real possibility that all their Google Adsense adverts will be disabled.

If every article writer did this then the word would soon get around. After all, what is the point of crafting a well written and informative article if rogues are going to disable the live links then steal them for their own profit? They are dishonest but I doubt if they are that stupid to place their entire "cobbled together" sites at risk.

About the author: Gary Simpson is the author of eight books covering a diverse range of subjects such as self esteem, affirmations, self defense, finance and much more. His articles appear all over the web. Gary's email address is budo@iinet.net.au. Click here to go to his Motivation & Self Esteem for Success website where you can receive his "Zenspirational Thoughts" plus an immediate FREE copy of his highly acclaimed, life-changing e-book "The Power of Choice."

Gary Simpson is a 7th Dan karate master who teaches self defense, motivation, self help and wealth building to students around the world through home study courses. You may reprint this article as you include this author credit and an active link to his web site. Finance - Self Help - Motivation - Self Defense - Personal Growth MotivationSelfEsteem.com