Last week I made a post titled I Hate Thieves! Blogger Steals My Content! and ranted about a blogger who took one of my articles and deleted my links. I sent the owner of the blog an email via the contact page and hadn’t heard back.

Well today I received an email from the owner after two weeks of having sent the email. Here is what the blog owner said…

Thank you for your check my blog, I have already put your website link in my article with keyword “work from home online business” in my webpage http://www.getcashonline.org/work-from-home-online

Now obviously the owner doesn’t speak very good English, but you get the idea. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. Of course, I actually went to the page and made sure that he really did add my link. It’s there, along with the other million links he added of his own.

I need to correct him, though. He stated that he placed my link in “his article.” The fact is that he placed my link in MY ARTICLE. My link deserved to be there all along from the beginning when he decided to use my article.

This problem has been around forever, and it’s impossible to fight it completely. Most scraper blogs (blogs that scrape content from other sources, usually through RSS) steal content all the time with no recognition or link back to the source. I don’t think this is a scraper blog, but if you’re deleting links intentionally, then it might as well be one.

If you market your work from home business using article marketing then I’m sure you’ve been faced with this issue before. It’s not something you should get real worried about as it doesn’t happen too often, but it’s something you should be aware of. Not everyone is going to be honest. That’s just how it is.

There’s some rare cases, such as this one, where you can actually contact the owner and try to resolve the issue. This is the best case of action you can take. It really isn’t worth your time to pursue content thieves. Like I said, they’re the minority, not the majority.

Writing content for the web and marketing your online business comes with this risk. I just want you to be aware of it and realize that it’s going to happen. Fortunately for me I was able to revert this issue. If you want to eliminate this risk and get a much better reach for your articles then be sure to check out the Free Traffic System.

This also brings up another point and one I push quite heavily. If you haven’t heard of Google Alerts or don’t use it, you’re doing a disservice to you and your online business. It’s important to keep track of who’s talking about you and who’s linking to your websites. There’s no better way to do this than by setting up Alerts for your name and website domains. It’s fast and easy to do.

I hope my experiences here can help some of you. Don’t let this discourage you from writing content for marketing your work from home business. It’s an excellent way to get your name and business out there. Be sure to check out my Article Marketing Works video to see how its been helping me.

Okay, this post is pretty personal, but there is a lesson here if you’re a marketer online.

Basically what happened is that one of my articles ended up on another blog. Thanks to Google Alerts I found out about. I highly recommend using Google Alerts to keep track of your name and domain name.

Anyway, what this blogger did was take my article from one of the article directories that it’s posted on and put it up on his blog. No biggie, right? Well at first I thought… “awesome, someone likes my article and wants to share it with their readers.”

Well after investigating, I find that, while the person aknowledges that I’m the author, he completely removed my resource box from the article. If you’re familiar with article marketing, you’ll know this is in violation of the author’s copyright.

This guy went even further by not only removing my links, but adding his own throughout the entire article. When I saw this I was quite irked to say the least, and still am.

Luckily (or maybe not) for me he has contact information on his site, so I emailed the owner and asked him to include a link to my site since he blatantly had removed it. Of course, I have yet to get a response. I also told him I would take further action if he didn’t comply (which seems impossible now).

I then went to Whois.com and looked up the contact information and web host for this domain. After finding out the host, it turns out you can’t contact them unless you have an account with them. How convenient, right?

I then decided to leave a comment on the page that my article is on. Well, I found out that the owner had conveniently deleted it. What’s the point of allowing comments if you’re just going to delete them anyway!

My last resort is to post about it here. People like this make me mad. They can’t come up with their own content, so they steal other people’s content and don’t give credit back by at least keeping their links. Yes, my name is there, but that’s just not enough, and it violates the terms of the article directories and the author.

You can view my article as well as check out the blogger who stole my content at http://www.getcashonline.org/work-from-home-online.

I absolutely hate thieves and hope this guy gets what he deserves. I know this problem is everywhere and can’t be avoided. It’s people like this that give the honest people a bad name.

What’s your experience with this? How did you handle it?

Have you ever wondered what all websites are linking to you? Or maybe you would like to know who all is using your articles. Maybe you want to know who is mentioning your name on their blog or website.

Keeping tabs on your name and domain are a great way to see who all uses your content, is talking about you, etc.

Here are some tools to help you do just that:

URLFan.com – Enter your website and see every blog that is linking to your website. Results are in real time and the content is cultivated through the millions of RSS feeds. Your website is ranked and given a number based on every other website. Go see where your website ranks in the blogosphere! This will also provide the content in which bloggers are using to link to you. Very handy, little tool.

Google Alerts – You don’t need a Google Account for this, but I suggest you get one anyway if you don’t yet have one. It’s fast and easy and well worth it for many different reasons. Here’s how Google Alerts works. Enter a search term that you want to receive alerts for. Enter your email address where you want the alerts to be sent. If you’re signed in this will be the email account associated with your Google Account. Any time a reference is made to the search term you entered, you will be emailed alerts for every instance of the term.

Here’s an example: My search terms I use are “Alan Mater” and “http://www.replaceyoursalary.com.” So, every time my name or domain name is mentioned, I receive an alert with a link to the web page that those terms are on. This helps me find out who is talking about me or linking to my website.

These two resources are great if you write articles because you will be able to find out who is using them and posting them on their website or blog.

If you’re not yet keeping tabs on yourself, you should be. It’s quick and easy, and you may just be surprised at the results.