Plagiarism Peddlers?

By Matthew C. Keegan

I am amazed at what some people will do to increase their web site content.

Specifically, I have noticed a trend on at least one particular freelance site whereby someone will say they have a group of articles that they want to have rewritten. Okay, I haven’t seen the articles but I wonder if they are someone else’s articles or if they are the employer’s material needing an update?

I used to belong to a particular freelance site and have been disappointed — for the most part — with many of the employers posting work. Some are legitimate, but many seem to be looking for poorly written articles or rewrites for existing articles. In addition, some proposals want fully researched and fresh material written for the princely sum of $10 or less per article.

Let’s get real.

Personally, I stay away from all purveyors of plagiarism and stick with those employers who are looking for more than a quick fix for their poorly performing website. If you want junk, your site will look and read like junk; there is simply no way of ethically getting around this point. Furthermore, you get what you pay for.

If you are a professional writer, I hope you are holding up conventional copyright standards. If you aren’t, then you are simply contributing to much of the regurgitated garbage now circulating on the internet. End of story.

Copyright 2006 – For additional information regarding Matt Keegan, The Article Writer, please visit his blog for wit, quips, and freelance writing tips.

Top 10 2007 TAW Picks

There are still a few days left in 2007, but now is as good a time as any to run down the list of the ten most read The Article Writer (TAW) blog articles for the year. Next to Time Magazine’s Person of the Year issue, I’m sure that this entry isn’t that far behind!

Some of the articles that placed big were a surprise to me. Thanks to StumbleUpon, you just never knew when an article would go viral and just how widespread its reach would be. FYI, every article that placed well was written during the second half of the year when I upped the ante with my link baiting strategy.

Without further blather, I give to you the Top 10 TAW Reads for 2007:

1. Firefox Wants You To Pay For Their Marketing Campaign — With more than 5000 page views, this article was the clear winner. Looking back, it wasn’t entirely accurate either!

2. 6 Months of StumbleUpon Fun — I thought that a StumbleUpon (SU) post would have won out, but a second place finish is still very good. I have learned that almost any mention of SU draws a strong response — SU was the largest traffic generator of TAW for the year, sending to me 44% of all traffic.

3. Your Blog Has Died And I Really Miss It! — Who says there isn’t a place for blog humor? Although it wasn’t the top visited article, it generated nearly 50 comments from readers.

4. Helium Responds To My Critique Of Their Service — I wrote about the Helium Marketplace or HM (see #5) and that elicited a response from Helium which was the centerpiece of this article. I thought HM was a bad idea back then and I still think that it is today.

5. The Helium Marketplace: Don’t Make This Terrible Mistake — see #4.

6. I Am The Fad Police: Now Cut That Out! — I like to poke fun at the various blog rulemakers who tell us how to blog, how often to blog, why to blog, etc. The nerve of them!

7. Have I Been Sending Stumble Thunder Your Way? — After posting this article, I thought using the word tsunami instead of thunder would have been a better choice.

8. Just A Blip On The Facebook Radar — I’m still not all that visible on Facebook, so I was surprised that article attracted much attention. Maybe I need to blog about Facebook as much as I do about StumbleUpon!

9. The Writing Habits Of Effective Freelancers — Yes, I do blog about writing directing my words to other freelance writers. We freelance writers not only like to write, but we also like to read about how other freelancers work.

10. Grammar Gremlins You Must Exorcise — It must have been the Halloween theme which brought in the visitors for this article. Still, grammar miscues can be a real killer and are worth discussing from time to time.

The results of this report do not include articles that appeared on my The Auto Writer blog or HTML articles posted elsewhere on this domain. Visitors to this URL found this blog first, the home page of URL second, and my auto blog third.

How about you? Have you tracked the performance of articles you have written? If so, please hit the reply button and share the link to your recap here.

Happy New Year and Happy Blogging!