Are You Afraid of Shadows? Boo!
Weird title I know… but in the world of Internet Marketing, we all have shadows lurking behind our RSS feed and following right along with the same steps we take. Over the past few years of running the Niche Store Builder site, I have had more than my own fair share of RSS Ninjas… and while its funny to read what they write and see what they do, sometimes you just wanna nuke them! :-) Not today…
Identifying Your RSS Ninjas
In most cases, finding your Ninja shadows can pretty easy! You can just head over to Google and do a search for some of the content you have recently written about. Once you search G, just hit the more options link near the top and narrow it to blog searches in the past week.
In most cases, you will find related posts listed right around the same time as your own…
Common Characteristics of Your Shadow Ninja’s
I know personally of a few Ninjas that lurk in the shadow of the NSB site. The following traits have held true for both and may be true of your own RSS Ninjas.
- They NEVER post comments on your Site or join into discussions!
- They NEVER link to your work, often claiming it as their own!
- They Spring into action when they Spot a Great Idea on your site!
- They Contradict themselves on their own sites, sometimes within just days of each post!
- They Tend to Feed People Bad Information when they Shoot from their Own Hip!
- They are VERY Predictable and Easily Manipulated, without Ever Knowing it! :-)
Dealing With Your Own RSS Ninjas
This is probably the hardest part of having an RSS Ninja or two in your shadows. I mean, you really don’t want to stir the pot and discredit them in public… but at the same time, you feel obligated to your own readers to let them know about things, just so they don’t fall into the Ninjas trap!
If you DO decide to call out one of your own RSS Ninjas – make sure you have your game in full court press mode! Once you make that call, its up to you to have the proof that they are full of shit, not the other way around!
You will be surprised (Maybe even shocked!) at what you can learn about people, just by having a list of the domains they own, and looking at the content or niche within each!
How Do You Deal with Your RSS Ninjas?
Hmmm – I wonder if one of my own RSS Ninjas will reveal themselves by commenting? Nahh…
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Your getting me all pissed off now. Just when I was calm and trying to find other ways to work around some issues – you gotta go and bring up a sour spot. Grrrrr.
I have 2 great domain names and both rank well in the SERP’s (stores). Unforntunately, I didn’t register the .info, .org, .net and .biz of these domains and there are some copy cats. One has the freaking slogan down same as what’s on my site. I know because I was there first, I just figured no one would register them or even the plurals – go figure – I won’t let it happen again. %)&$%)@$ ’s !!!!!!
But I have since saved up the cash and purchased better aftermarket domain names in the same niches, so if I ever have to, I can hit’em where it really hurts and develop those other ones even better. Would be better than converting the current sites. MAHAHAHAHA.
Yet again you let me know about something that would never even have crossed my mind – I’m so glad I subscribe to your email updates, Mark. I’m not sure my websites are popular enough yet to merit this kind of RSS copying, but I’m happy you made me aware of the issue. I’ve just got my head around Feedburner and will be looking out for this kind of plagiarism.
Cheers!
I remember the last time you had site scrapers using your content. It is a not so new thing on the social sites Ive noticed. I get lots of how to auto blog ebook spam DM’s in my twitter accounts.
It has come out of the shadows and is being promoted as a legitimate way to build sites to send content to twitter, myspace, facebook etc.
On another hand on some sites I tell people to grab my rss and feed it to their social accounts.
The whole SEO thing go’s out the window as far as unique content.
I actually called out a couple people spamming me with this and told them its stealing and Google dislikes site scraping.
Lot that will do I know, but it beats beating my girlfriend. LOL
Look for lots more of this with unemployed people trying to earn online not knowing the rules.
@ All –
I actually LIKE RSS scrapers and dont mind at all when someone pulls your content and displays it on their site… after all, thats what RSS and Syndication are all about anyhow! most, not all, but most will even leave your link in place and cite you as the original author…
You can grab the “rss footer” plugin as well, which automatically inserts a link back to your post and the post title on rss or syndicated sites.
Mark
Mark,
Like you, I no longer fear the RSS Ninjas. When I set up a new site I make sure I install the RSS Footer plugin and add a link back to my site in the footer. Most of the time, scrapers don’t bother with removing links, so now I have a free backlink to my site. Sure, it is on a crap site that probably doesn’t have any PR, but a backlink is a backlink. I now create sites without fear of scraping, since I know it will happen and am as prepared as possible for it.
Rochelle
@ Rochelle – hey, thanks for the reminder to use the RSS Footer plugin – I’m going back to check my websites………
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