Although I track the number of hits this blog and other blogs I write get each day, I have never bothered to track what happens to the content after I have put it up.

And so it came as a surprise when one day I found an entire blog of mine reprinted on another site, without any acknowledgement to me.

Now it seems this is not uncommon. According to Biz Report (full reference at the end) Attributor Corporation in the US tracked online content from 100 publishers to see what happened to it.

It turns out that the content is used and re-used – so that most readers have more chance of reading it on another site, than reading it on the original.

There are ways around this. Most sites don’t carry copyright notices, and this can help. But more than that, the more idiosyncratic a site, the more likely it is not to be copied. Of course you might want your material copied – but the problem is that the people copying are unlikely to give you any mention or credit, so it tends not to do you any good.

But that does not make blogs pointless – a significant level of work comes into my company as a result of the various blogs we have – and I have read research that shows that blogs are more cost effective that google ad words as a form of on line advertising.

This blog is a reprint from a daily digest of direct mail news – you can subscribe to that free of charge by sending an email to direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

More information on the story:

http://www.bizreport.com/2008/11/thousands_in_revenues_lost_due_to_pirated_content.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=18112008