Banging My Head Against A Brick Wall

Today was the pits. I got home from a hard days work, logged on and saw more new writers and more new articles than any day since I stopped automatic submission. I should have been pleased, I was pleased until reality snuck in.

Despite adding a paragraph in red above the article submission page about not accepting anything that is plagiarised etc. 27 out of 36 articles submitted I suspected were plagiarised. Some of the same writers that I had deleted their accounts for that reason signed up again and submitted more plagiarised articles. 6 of the articles were not written in English and as the site is all English I had to decline them. 3 decent articles left and a heck of a lot of my time wasted.

I have come across article directories that have suspended submissions because of spamming or plagiarism and I don't blame them.

Because so much of my time is being wasted I have less time to promote the site and write my own articles. That will have an effect on the genuine writers and of course my business. One little ray of sunshine is that I found a very low cost article writing service which I am now recommending to the cheats. I've no doubt that most will ignore me, but maybe some will get the message.

What Next?

This blog is turning out to be more of a moan than a blog but I guess we all have to get things off our chests somehow.

During the last couple of weeks a lot of my time has been wasted checking articles for cheats. Something like 3 out of 4 articles submitted have been plagiarised fully or partially and the amount has been growing.

At first I felt sorry for some of the posters, I know that not everybody can write acceptable quality articles and I know that a lot of people cannot afford to pay for ghost writers. I feel that these cheats want to jump on the article marketing bandwagon and plagiarism is their only option.

I can't condone plagiarism though. I know that some article directory owners have been threatened with the law for accepting plagiarised articles and I am not prepared to put myself in that position.

Some of the cheaters have had the nerve to try it on more than once. I've deleted accounts and they have just signed up and cheated again. I have now added a notice about plagiarism to the article submit page. It is going to be one strike and they are out. I know where I can get a script to block people and I will install that if necessary.

I wonder if these people think that because I am relatively new to owning an article directory I have no experience of spotting cheats. If so they can think again, I've been writing on internet sites for years and can usually easily spot plagiarised work. There are lots of tells to look for and google does the rest.

To end on an high note my 2 and 3 year old grandchildren came visiting today. We went to the park and did lots of sliding and playing on the swings. Much more fun that checking plagiarised articles!