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Why Plagiarizing On Your Blog is Always a Bad Idea

By now, everyone should know that plagiarizing on your blog is ethically wrong and, in most cases, illegal.

If you get caught the punishments can be severe as you can face legal consequences, including copyright infringement lawsuits, DMCA takedown notices and more, as well as damage to your reputation and your career.

But let’s say for a moment that you’ve decided the rewards, whatever they may be, are worth the risks. Let’s go on to say that you’re right and you’re able to blog and run your site for an extended period of time without having your misdeeds noticed.

That’s great right? This hypothetical version of you (which I will be addressing throughout this post) just beat the system, cheated death and managed to build an entire site using the works and ideas of others without attribution or consequence.

Unfortunately, it’s not so simple. Even if you aren’t caught, plagiarism still hurts you and your site. Regardless of whether the world never learns your secret, you’re still setting yourself back.

Consider, briefly, the following three consequences that you’ll face for plagiarism, even if you are never found out, and ask yourself again if plagiarism truly is worthwhile. [Read more…] about Why Plagiarizing On Your Blog is Always a Bad Idea

How Can Web Analytics Help You?

Every successful endeavor follows a certain progression. It all begins when the idea is born. As the idea takes root, details and roadmaps follow. At a certain point, when the idea is converted into something tangible, feedback and evaluation always comes into play. That is, if you want to make sure that your undertaking achieves its goals.

Whether you’re talking about a simple blog or an e-commerce platform, you cannot get away from the importance of getting feedback and evaluating what you are doing. Unless you don’t really care if you are successful or not.

In the online realm, there are many ways of gaining feedback, and one of the most effective tools is web analytics. You might not put much thought into how web analytics tools have evolved as we know them today, but these tools have been around since the early 90s – pretty much a few years after the world wide web itself was born. For sure, those pioneers had an idea of the path they were taking, and thanks to them, today, the average person can take advantage of web analytics. [Read more…] about How Can Web Analytics Help You?

Your Site, Your Security, Your Responsibility

Last time, we talked a great deal about why you never want to go to court and the reasons that good attorneys will fight tooth and nail to keep you to out of court and away from judges/juries.

However, one of the sad truths of the Internet is that it’s easily possible to find yourself in a legal mess through almost no fault of your own if someone else infiltrates your site.

It might seem like an unlikely scenario, but if your site is hacked or taken over, you can find yourself with a great deal of legal difficulties. Even if you can clear your name quickly, your site, your account and your server could become evidence in a much larger case and you could easily find yourself shut out of even your backups as authorities, lawyers or others try to piece together what happened.

The problem is even worse if you store user data, in particular sensitive data such as credit card numbers and personal information, such as names and passwords. Not only do you face a potential breach of trust with your readers, but the authorities will likely want to know more about the hack and, at the very least, you’ll need to be offline while you figure out what happened and you could be found to be in violation of legal responsibilities you have to protect such data.

If you want your site to run smoothly and be free from interference from government and law enforcement, security is crucial. It’s not something you can be relaxed on, even if you think no one would take an interest in your site.

After all, it’s the ones who think they can’t get hacked or won’t get hacked that fall first. Not because their hubris draws out attackers, but because they fail to take the basic steps that can prevent a security meltdown. [Read more…] about Your Site, Your Security, Your Responsibility

Why You Never Want to Go to Court

Here’s a simple question to frustrate your attorney: “Is it legal to do _________?”

For one, if it’s something you have to ask, there’s likely no clear answer to it. No matter what area of law it is, online or off, if you need to ask whether something is legal you’re probably doing something that’s at least of dubious ethics, if not dubious legality.

But the bigger problem with the question is that it misses the larger issue. By asking if something is legal, you’re asking “If someone sues me over this (or, even worse, if I get arrested over this), will I likely lose at trial?”

Unfortunately though, that’s the wrong question to ask.

Whether you can win or lose in a trial is irrelevant, it’s unlikely that any dispute you have will ever make it to a trial and, even if it does, the law itself is only a tiny part of what you have to factor in.

The better question, most of the time, is “How likely am I to get sued (or arrested) over this?”. While your lawyer can never promise definitely you want be sued, it doesn’t matter how legal or “right” your actions are if you can’t survive a lawsuit or draw a legal challenge from someone larger than you, what the letter of the law says doesn’t matter at all.

Though a trial is supposed to be an arbiter of justice, in truth a trial is something to avoid and something any good attorney looking out for your best interest will work to the bone to keep you out of.

Here are five reasons why that’s the case: [Read more…] about Why You Never Want to Go to Court

Why Good Laws Go Bad

In Florida, the state legislature wanted to crack down on what it felt was a growing problem of Internet cafe gambling. To do so, it felt that the best way was to place steep restrictions on the types of machines that would be considered legal in the state for gambling-like activities.

As a result, they passed a new law that such said machines had to comply with three different rules:

All machines had to be coin operated, no dollar bills, credit cards, etc.
All games had to involve an element of skill, not just be pure chance
No machine could offer a cash prise, only merchandise, and only of a value up to 75 cents.

With the law passed, the police began to move in on Internet cafes that offered gambling services and it seemed that the law was effective, shutting down the intended target.

But then some of those cafe owners began to cry foul saying that the law was being unfairly applied to only them. According to them, the law also makes Chuck E Cheese equally illegal.

Though many recoiled at the idea of a children’s arcade being an illegal den of gambling, upon closer inspection, the argument makes sense. The chain not only offers prizes with over 75 cent value, some going up to $20 or more, but it also has several games that are pure chance.

In short, a law that was intended to shutter Internet cafes widely considered to be shady, may have accidentally banned a popular destination for kids.

But it wasn’t the first or last law to go bad. The law of unintended consequences can be brutal and many times legislators are the first to feel its sting. [Read more…] about Why Good Laws Go Bad

How to Promote Your Guest Blog Posts on Social Media

Social media and guest blogging were meant to be together– they both can increase your exposure, allow you to meet new people, and make it easy to share your ideas with the world. Whether you are the blog needing guest posts or the blogger who has posts that you would like to publish, guest blogging can be more successful if social media is involved during the entire journey.

Setting Up Expectations

Before even getting actual guest posts, be sure to set up the expectations from either the writer or the website. Besides setting up the guidelines for the content of the post itself, it is also important to iron out how social media is going to be used. Will the writer or website promote your guest post? If so, on what accounts? How many shares are they going to post? Is there a special hashtag that is going to be used? It’s also important that both sides know each other’s Twitter and Facebook profile names so they can tag one another.

It benefits both the writer and website to promote any and all guest posts– the website gets more traffic and the writer gets more exposure for both him or herself and their business or website.

Building Up Your Social Audience

Building up your social audience should always be at the forefront of your mind when it comes to social media. If you have a big following across multiple social media platforms, this can be an added incentive and benefit to your perspective guest author or publisher of your content.

For instance, if you propose a guest post, you can mention that you also have 10,000 Twitter followers. This not only lets the website know that you can increase the exposure of their website by tweeting your guest post link, but it also shows that you are an established and knowledgeable person in your industry. Including other metrics, such as your Facebook likes, Pinterest followers, and website metrics (such as pageviews per month) can also be useful to websites that are considering you as a guest writer.

On the flip side, for websites that are looking for high quality guest writer, a large platform will bring better writers (and therefore, higher quality posts). The more traffic you get, the more credible you will look to potential writers who are looking for places to submit unique content.

Building a great social audience can make a difference, no matter which side you are on.

Find Your Opportunities

In addition to increasing your credibility, social media can also be used to find guest blogging opportunities. Putting a call out on Twitter for guest bloggers or asking fans on Facebook for places to submit content can be a great way to connect with others who need content or who are writing it.

It also helps to search by keyword or hashtag via social media– #guestblogging or #writeforus might be good places to start. Set up an alert for specific hashtags or phrases and have it send you an alert as soon it appears online.

Besides searching for hashtags and phrases, you should also regularly follow businesses and individuals that are in your industry. Some may follow you back, allowing you to connect. This type of digital networking can lead to genuine connections that can create all different kinds of content opportunities.

Working With the Writer

From a website perspective, you should treat writers with respect and admiration. These writers are wanting to give you content for free, and you should be appreciative. It is easy to do this if you expectations have been declared up front. Have a unique guest blogging page or section on your website that outlines:

The types of post you are looking for
The length of the post
Whether or not the writer needs to include photos, attribution, links, etc.
The type of bio allowed, including what type and the amount of links

It is also helpful to include topic suggestions, “ideal” post examples, and places to find royalty free stock photo content (photopin.com is amazing).

Working With the Website Owner

If you are a writer needing places to distribute your content, it is important to choose websites that fall into your industry or interests. For instance, don’t ask to guest blog on a website that sells jewelry if you work for a travel app start-up. While there are some creative ways that blogs and websites of all industries can work together, it’s usually best to stick to what you know (this also makes your posts easier to promote via social media).

When you are contacting the website owner about a guest post, be sure to:

Pitch a topic for a post
Ask any follow-up questions, such as photo sources or bio length
Frequency opportunities

Website owners and writers can both greatly benefit from guest blogging. Even though it can be a time-costing endeavor, it is worth it to all parties involved, especially when social media is thrown into the mix.

To learn more about the guest blogging services that Performancing provides, please contact us.

The 3 Dumbest Ways to Get in Legal Trouble Online

Though the law may never fully catch up to the pace of innovation on the Internet, it certainly is trying and there are a lot of ways you can find yourself in legal trouble on the Web.

Many of the ways are obscure, complex and difficult to avoid. Is using that passage from a site a copyright infringement? Is that comment about another person defamation? Is the action you want to take a violation of a terms of service? These are often tough questions that can be difficult even for legal experts to answer.

But then there are the ways in which idiots find themselves getting in trouble online. Things that pretty much any sane, reasonable and intelligent human being would know to be a bad idea before even finishing the thought.

Yet, time and time again people fall victim to the most stupid and idiotic ways that they can get in trouble online.

So, for a bit of fun and education today, we’re going to look at three of the dumbest ways people seem to routinely get in trouble online. You might learn something, but if you do, you probably want to re-examine whether you want to be online or not.

After all, if you’re falling into these hazards, the Internet is likely just a great big disaster waiting to happen. [Read more…] about The 3 Dumbest Ways to Get in Legal Trouble Online

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