What are bloggers stealing from you in order to make money?
Bloggers can be devious people sometimes. If they aren’t out “borrowing” content, they’re trying to get ahead one way or another. The blogosphere is a cut-throat kind of place, but I think the line has to be drawn at taking from others without permission to mislead an audience. Sure, we all want to make money, but some blogger go too far.
No tactic could be said to go too far if it works and makes money, unless you are outright lying to your audience and trying to get ahead by stealing. I came across a blog called The Affluent Blogger. I had a browse through the content and didn’t find anything too inspiring. My confidence in the blog was boosted by the large number of RSS subscribers: it was at over 500, so I thought that this guy must be doing something right.
Then I noticed that the number of comments was strangely low, and the posting was sporadic. Nothing about this blog stood out and said “subscribe!” to me. I right-clicked the RSS button and, to my amazement, The Affluent Blogger is using the Feedburner button of My Two Dollars, a blog that discusses various matters related to making money.
I haven’t contacted either of these bloggers about the matter because there’s really no need to. They’ll both see this post and can act upon it as they wish. Maybe the blogs are run by the same person (although this looks unlikely), or perhaps the two bloggers are friends (again, unlikely), but the fact is that one blogger has taken something from another to deliberately mislead his audience.
It goes beyond content theft and into new territory. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to trust new blogs, like mine, because too many bloggers are going out of their way to destroy any sense of trust that might have once existed. This works in the favor of John Chow, Darren Rowse, Kumiko, and anyone already established in the field of making money online, but it pisses me off.
What are people stealing from you? Probably more than you think.
Update: The blogger in question removed his fake RSS counter already without so much as a comment here.
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5 Responses to “What are bloggers stealing from you in order to make money?”
Ha! Congrats on finding one of these guys. Ever since CashQuests mentioned this stat-theft recently, I’ve been looking for them myself. Hadn’t found one yet, but I was hoping to expose one just like this.
I know of several blogs that just don’t get as many comments as you think they should. My blog has a pathetically low number of subscribers, so how can I receive more comments than a blog with, say, 4300 subscribers? That one has subscribers due to the service it provides, not the blog, but the subscriber number is posted on the blog. Not quite expose-worthy but still dodgy. Then again, I know of another blog with 1700 subscribers that gets about the same number of comments as me, and his numbers look legit.
Nice work, Angel.
Google Alerts can be helpful for finding people that are stealing content.
hmmm… you know how the temptation is to click on the said person’s link to their site?, just to check em out? - well, i ain’t doing that - no siree - they don’t deserve the traffic.
Ha ! Good find. It’s always nice when you catch people out. Good work angel !
Becky
Good thing I found you only today…long after the other blog took my RSS # down. Interesting though, good article!