Category Archives: On Blogging

Some thoughts about blogging.

Using Creative Commons to Stop Scraping

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An excellent article on PlagiarismToday.

As a blogger, feed scraping is one of my pet peeves. It irks me to no end that sploggers use automated tools to copy my copyrighted content from my site to sites that exist solely to attract clicks on AdSense and other ads.

Jonathan Bailey likely feels the same way. He writes about the topic regularly in his blog, providing well-researched and insightful commentary to help understand and fight the problem.

His recent article, “Using Creative Commons to Stop Scraping” on PlagiarismToday:

Many sites, including this one , have expressed concerns that CC licenses may be encouraging or enabling scraping.

The problem seems to be straightforward. If a blog licenses all of their content under a CC license, then a scraper that follows the terms of said license is just as protected as a human copying one or two works….

However, after talking with Mike Linksvayer, the Vice President of Creative Commons, I’m relieved to say that is not the case. CC licenses have several built-in mechanisms that can prevent such abuse.

In fact, when one looks at the future of RSS, it is quite possible that using a CC license might provide better protection than using no license at all.

The article then goes on to explain what a Creative Commons license is and what it requires of the licensee. As Jonathan explains, the automation tools that sploggers use simply cannot meet all of the requirements of a CC license, thus putting the sploggers in clear violation of the license terms.

If you’ve been wondering about copyright as it applies to your blog or Web site, be sure to check out this article. While you’re at PlagiarismToday, poke around a bit. I think you’ll find plenty of other good material to help you understand copyright and what you can do when your rights are violated.

How to Handle Reciprocal Link Requests

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Why you shouldn’t always say yes.

This morning, I got a feedback message from the owner of another Web site:

My name is [omitted] and I have recently visited your site and wondered
whether you might be interested in exchanging a reciprocal link with our site.

If interested, please respond with a reciprocal link to my website.
======= ======== ======== ======================
Here is our website information:
————————————
Home page URL: http://[omitted[
Website Title: [omitted] Directory
Description: A Wholesalers and Dropshippers directory for traders, ebayers and new businesses.
E-mail Address: [omitted]
Category: (wholesale, wholesalers, dropship, dropshippers, suppliers, trade, Business, Business Services)
Keywords: wholesale, wholesalers, dropship, dropshippers, suppliers, trade, wholesaler, wholesales, directory, list, goods, products, uk, usa, Wholesale Products, wholesale directory, jewelry, clothing, product, gift, t shirt, bead furniture, dvd, watches, apparel leather, food, shopping, USA, America, American, Canada

My, that’s quite an informative request for a reciprocal link. I wonder whether he expected me to set up a Web page for him on my site.

I deleted the request without even replying. Why? Let me tell you.

Reciprocal Link, Defined

To make sure we’re all on the same page (no pun intended), let me start by explaining what a reciprocal link is.

A reciprocal link is an arrangement where one Web site owner includes a link to another Web site owner’s site, with the understanding that that other Web site owner will include a link to his site. A links to B and B links back to A.

In general, it seems like a good deal. After all, you’re getting exposure for your site on another site, right? And all it’s costing is the time and effort and page real estate to add the other link — in other words, hardly anything at all.

But Is It a Good Match?

Consider the request I got this morning. The site owner operates a site that’s a directory of wholesalers and dropshippers. Okay. So what does that have to do with my site?

The answer is nothing. There’s no relationship between what I write about here and the information that’s available on his site.

As a result, only a small percentage of my site’s visitors would be remotely interested in the information on his site. And a small percentage of his site’s visitors would be remotely interested in the information on my site.

What’s the Real Cost?

So you might be wondering, what’s the harm of including a link to an unrelated site on your site? After all, it doesn’t really cost anything.

Well, here’s the way I see it. If you included a link to every single site that asked you for a link, you’d soon have a huge link list with little or no value to your site visitors. You’re using up page real estate to clutter up your site with pretty much useless information.

And on the other side of the reciprocating agreement are sites that are doing pretty much the same thing: building long lists of links to unrelated sites, just so they can get your link to theirs. Is anyone really going to find your link — provided they even bother to look — in that long list?

Is it worth degrading your site to get those links? I don’t think so.

And Are These Requests Real?

That brings up the question of whether the requests you receive are real. In other words, did the site owner who contacted you really visit your site and think it would make a good candidate for a reciprocal link?

In this day and age, spam is all too common. It’s possible that your e-mail address got into the hands of someone who is sending the same exact message to thousands of other Web site owners or bloggers.

The message I received is certainly generic enough to go out to anyone. But in my case, I didn’t get it directly by e-mail. Instead, I got it through the use of my Feedback form, which requires either a really smart spambot or a person to create and send the message. So there’s a good chance that this site owner actually did visit my site.

If so, however, what gave him the idea that I’d link to a dropshipper directory?

When to Say Yes

Of course, some reciprocal link requests will be beneficial for both you and the other site owner. But how can you tell? Here are some things to consider:

  • Is it a good match? As I mentioned before, there should be some relationship between the two sites. Would a link to the other site benefit your site’s visitors? If so, it’s worth considering.
  • What is the other site like? Is it a quality site, one you want to send you site’s visitors to? I’ve ignored many link requests to sites that just weren’t up to my standards due to content quality, design, or excessive advertising.
  • How many links are on the other site? Are they links to related sites? Remember, if the other site has hundreds of links to other sites, it’s not likely that anyone looking at the list will find yours.

Of course, once you decide to enter into a reciprocal link agreement with another site, you’ll need to keep tabs on the other site. Has your link to the other site been created as promised? Is it still there, week after week, month after month? This will increase your site management workload a bit. But if the reciprocal link is one worth having, it’s worth the extra effort to keep track of.

Conclusion

If you get a request from another Web site or blog owner for a reciprocal link, don’t just say yes. Do your homework to make sure you really want that link on your site.

A free link isn’t always free.

A Google AdSense Milestone

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I break the century mark.

RevenuSenseFor the first time, monthly AdSense earnings from all of my Web sites has passed the $100 mark. That means I actually get a payment for a single month.

Woo hoo!

AdSense is currently covering all costs of hosting and renewing domain names for all of my sites. But that’s about it.

(Obviously, if I was blogging for money, I would have quit a long time ago.)

In case you’re wondering, two thirds of my AdSense revenue comes from wickenburg-az.com, which gets about half as many visitors as this site. That site is a general info site appealing to people interested in the town of Wickenburg. They’re not necessarily techies, so they’re more likely to click ads. This site attracts mostly techies, who are less likely to click (or even see) ads.

I removed all my LinkShare ads from wickenburg-az.com today. I removed them from this site about two months ago. What a waste of code.

Revenue TextLinkAds is just starting to pick up. But I don’t ever expect revenue from that source to surpass AdSense.

And in case you’re wondering, the image shown above is from the RevenuSense widget, which I reviewed here in March.

One Less Blogger

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A blogger passes on.

The other day, I got the following e-mail message:

I’m one of Fred Mullen’s son’s. He had a blog at www.phredsthoughts.blogspot.com. Dad linked your blog on his front page, and had mentioned it to me before.

I don’t know if you knew Dad, but because he had mentioned yours and linked it on his, I thought I should write and let you know that he passed away from esophageal cancer on May 12. Dad was 66. He was diagnosed just 6 weeks earlier, and death came quickly. I miss him terribly.

His final blog entry was written a week before his death. He planned to journal his walk with cancer. He just didn’t realize that the walk was nearly over.

I had visited Fred’s blog after realizing that he linked to me. It was a typical blog, full of personal thoughts and ideas, well written and mature. His last entry, “Journey Through a Dark Valley,” began the story of his bout with cancer. Dated May 5, 2007, it was written only a week before his death.

It’s interesting to think about what Fred has left behind for the world: his blog. It’s still online and anyone can read it and learn a little about Fred. Nothing lasts forever and someday, when Blogger folds, this public remnant of Fred will also be gone. But until then, we can read it and remember what this particular blogger was about.

Rest in peace, Fred. And thanks for sharing with us.

Vox "Blogger" Copies and Pastes

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Another blatant case of copyright infringement.

I use Google Alerts to find articles that might interest me. Today, while going through a list of articles that came in earlier in the week, I found an article titled “Mac OS X Vs Windows Vista.” I clicked the link and was taken to a page on Vox, yet another blog-based social networking site. The blog entry began with the following brief introduction:

Doing my daily read of the news papers today and I came across a story asking which is the better OS, Windows Vista or Apple’s OS X. me I’m a mac users so I already know which is the better OS lol. Anyhow I’m sure you don’t want to read my one sided thoughts lol.

What followed that was a sloppy paraphrasing of the entire text of an article called “Vista versus Mac OS X” on Blogger.com. The Vox “author” had obviously copied and pasted the entire piece into the Vox-hosted blog, then edited selected sentences and added paragraph breaks to come up with a lengthy summary.

For example, the original says this:

On features alone it’s easy to conclude that Vista and Mac OS X are now on par but this overlooks two important elements. Firstly, the feel of both products is very different. In my opinion Mac OS X is unobtrusive and its interface intuitive and clean. Vista on the other hand makes you work for it. Take for example another new feature for Vista called User Account Control (UAC). UAC presents an intrusive dialogue box that warns you whenever you try to make a system wide change or install a new application. This will annoy most users however and you can just switch it off. But doing so overrides all of the new security measures Microsoft have built into Vista and makes the threat of infection from viruses or malware more likely. In contrast Mac OS X generally still remains virus and malware free.

And the Vox copy says this:

ON FEATURES alone it is easy to conclude that Vista and Mac OSX are on par, but this overlooks two important elements.

First, the feel of both products is different.

In my opinion Mac OSX is unobtrusive and its interface intuitive and clean. Vista, on the other hand, makes you work for it.

Take, for example, another new feature for Vista called User Account Control (UAC).

This presents an intrusive dialogue box that warns you whenever you try to make a system-wide change or install a new application.

This will annoy most users, however, and you can just switch it off. But doing so overrides all of the new security measures Microsoft has built into Vista and makes the threat of infection from viruses or malware more likely.

In contrast, Mac OSX generally still remains virus and malware free.

This is just one example. The entire piece was used this way.

Yes, the Vox blogger did link back to the original article. But why bother going there? All of the important points were already available on Vox.

And yes, the Vox blogger did include the name of the original post’s author. But did he have permission to use the entire article? I seriously doubt it. Was this “fair use”? I don’t think so.

As a writer, copyright infringement pisses me off to no end. A writer takes time to think about and compose an original, well-thought-out work. Who knows? It may have taken the article’s author hours to write the piece. How long did it take this lazy blogger to copy and paste its text into his blog? 15 seconds?

Obviously, I reported it to Vox. And I reported it to the author of the original piece. And then I left a comment for the blogger to think about.

Maybe (lol) he just doesn’t know any better (lol). Maybe (lol) Vox will set things right and teach him a little lesson about copyrights (lol).

It’ll probably put him out of business. As the sample of his writing shown at the beginning of this entry indicates, he obviously doesn’t know how to write anything worth reading.

By the way, the original article, by Danny Gorog, is pretty good. If you’re interested in these matters, I highly recommend it. You can find it here.

May 28 Update: The copy-and-paste blogger has deleted the comment I left on his offending blog post. If he cared about writers rights, he would have deleted the entire post. I’m curious to see what Vox will do about this. Probably nothing.