My first experience in dealing with article writers for hire has been dreadful to say the least.  The promise sounded good enough…unique, well written content of 400 words or more and search engine optimized to the max!

We are talking five articles about a specific niche that is well defined and understood. I gave detailed instructions on what content I desired, keywords and long-tail phrases to emphasize.

To be fair, the articles were all at least 400 words and I guess you could say that they were optimized for the search engines but the praise stops there.

Snippets of duplicate content ran through all five articles. There were incomplete phrases and comments that were unrelated to the topic. The grammar was hideous. English is in no way the first language of the article writer(s).

Just goes to show, if you want something done right (write?) do it yourself.

Now I’m in such pain. I was going to go head-to-head with Lissie’s Keyword Academy Challenge but now I’m back to square one.

In some cases, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery.

Especially when you discover that someone has copied your content and posted it in their blog, claiming it as their own work.

That’s theft. It’s copyright infringement. It’s plagiarism. It should not be tolerated.

An acquaintance of mine at Third Tribe Marketing discovered she had recently been a victim of such a crime and didn’t know how to deal with the situation. The plagiarizing scumbag took her content, word-for-word, and posted it on their new blog. What’s more stunning about this is the thief was a customer!

Someone copied my content. What should I do?

• Contact the person responsible for stealing your work and tell them (don’t ask them) to remove all instances of duplicate content immediately.
• Give them a maximum or 24 hours to remove the content. Notice I said to actually take the work offline, not just to respond to you.
• If they comply them go back to creating your unique content but keep a close eye on the offender. They stole from you once, they may steal from you again.
• If they don’t comply, then it’s time to get nasty. Send them a second note stating that if they don’t remove the duplicate content then you will report the situation to Big Bad Google. Google, as well as the United States legal system, takes copyright infringement issues quite seriously and they will act on your behalf to correct the problem.

How do I report copyright violations to Google?

Start by filing a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) report at http://www.google.com/dmca.html. If Google finds in your favor, the violation could result in the criminal paying costs and attorney fees as well as a stiff fine for damages. At minimum, their site will be removed from Google’s index. That’s death to any website. In some cases the URL is permanently set to a 503 service unavailable redirect. Gone forever. It’s serious business, folks! There’s a lot of detail to follow through on but it’s worth the effort.

It’s your valued content. It’s your brand. Don’t let anyone ever get away with stealing it from you!

*The phrase ” Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is attributed to Charles Caleb Colton.

**Image by ryancr.

R James Horne

CommentLuv is a “must have” WordPress plugin for anyone who wants to get more comments to your posts and take advantage of do-follow links back to their blog. CommentLuv retrieves that last entry on your blog and displays the title underneath the comment line of the blog your comment is being placed. I know…that’s REAL poor English but I’m so delighted with the product that I’m just beside myself.

What’s the benefit of this plugin? CommentLuv increases the number of comments on blog posts. Think about it for a moment. You read a comment to a post that interests you and then you see the latest post the commenter made on their own blog. Looks interesting! I’m gonna check it out. Boom. Double rewards time. You get a do-follow link from your comment, exposure on CommentLuv and a potential click and comment on your site.

I luv CommentLuv!

RJamesHorne

*Image by James Jordan

Affiliate marketers have again been shut down by tax-hungry politicians. In a stunning move yesterday, Amazon terminated it’s relationships with approximately 4,200 affiliate marketers based in Colorado after the state imposed a law that creates new regulations on how sales taxes are to be collected by affiliate marketing organizations that sell products online.

These brain-dead politicians were quick to lash out at Amazon, stating that the terminations are a retaliatory act intended as a ploy to gain national attention. It worked. Sure, Amazon chose to cut off the affiliates but it wouldn’t have happened if these idiotic politicians kept their collective noses out of businesses they don’t understand. Oops.I’m sorry, they don’t understand business at all. These tax and spend buffoons see business, affiliate or otherwise, as nothing more than a cash cow to be plundered at will.

According to The Wall Street Journal article, these 4,200 affiliates generated $37.5 million dollars in revenue. Essentially, the state of Colorado caused a “layoff” of 4,200 people and pulled $37.5 million dollars out of their own economy. Brilliant move, Colorado.

Many other states are looking to enact similar measures that will destroy countless businesses and put thousands of individuals out of work.

Amazon isn’t the only affiliate game in town. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies that use affiliate marketing as an extension of their traditional sales channels. Sooner or later, those companies will be targeted also.

The rape of affiliate marketers by tax-hungry politicians will surely continue until this multi-billion dollar channel evaporates.

For more information, visit PMA – Performance Marketing Association.

*Image by Liz West – Muffet

rjameshorne.com

Free Blog Setup for Senior Citizens

Many senior citizens want to have their own blog but they don’t know how to set one up. What further complicates their plight is that seniors think setting up their blog may be too technical, expensive and even a waste of time.

There is no reason why you can’t have a blog set up very quickly. In fact, I’ll set up blogs for anyone for free. Well, to clarify, no charge for the time it takes for me to do initial setup of your new blog. My compensation comes from domain name and web hosting giant, GoDaddy. I’ll send a special link to you that identifies me as a GoDaddy affiliate that tracks the purchase, so I get paid. Win-win isn’t it? I do all the setup and your web hosting services are done by one of the largest and most popular companies in the field.

So what do you get with my custom blog or website setup?

You select and register a domain name. A domain name is unique “.com” home page that is owned by you for as long as you want it.

Next, you’ll select a “look and feel” of your site with a WordPress theme. There are thousands of themes available at no charge. Post pictures, videos and share with friends and family. WordPress, by the way, is the most commonly used platform in the blogging world. If you want to get fancy, I also provide customizable theme through Thesis Theme for WordPress. I am also an affiliate with Thesis Themes and am paid for purchasing through one of my special promotional links. It is very easy to use and I’ll help you get going. There are plenty of free tutorial at WordPress but if you get stuck or just want personized attention then I’m a available for a small consulting fee.

So what are you waiting for? Just enter your contact information on the “contact” page and your new blog will be up and running in no time.

Third Tribe Marketing has been an inspiration for some and a bit of an irritation for others. I confess that I’m one of the inspired ones. What surprises me is that there are a group of people out there that are less than impressed with the Third Tribe. Some see the founders, Darren Rowse, Sonia Simone, Chris Brogan and Brian Clark with contempt. Why? Is it jealousy? These four people are A-list bloggers, have great reputaions and know what they are talking about. They are as good as it gets. So what’s the big deal? Sure they charge a monthly premium for access to the forum. So what? Go to their own sites and you’ll see lots of stuff there for free. Nothing spammy. Their blogs are packed with information that is written in such a way that most people should have no problem in following along.

I like it!

I’ve been on board with Third Tribe Marketing for just over a month and am delighted with the product. Hell, I sent a site mail to Chris and even got an answer. A good one. They listen. They participate. They have an affiliate program that should do very well.

I’m a six figure blogger in training. I need all the help I can get to put me on the road to making a good living by blogging.

There are online forums, real-time conference calls and interviews, advice from bloggers from around the globe that have built strong business on the principles that define the backbone of the Third Tribe creed. Their blog title says it all – “Internet Marketing Strategies that Work Without Being Obnoxious”. No black hat, no sneaky backdoor pop-ups or snarky “send me the money” scams.

Perhaps that’s why a group of Third Tribe haters exists – could it be because those fuming over the success of the forums has created angst among the true spammers? Could it be that there are millionaire bloggers in training like me who have been scammed one too many times by the obnox crowd? The answer to that question is a resounding yes!

Go ahead and slam Third Tribe if you wish. As for me, I’m in it for the long haul.

My blog is my business!

If you are making posts for your kids and grannies, then this update will leave you cold and breathless. Ya may as well take a powder.

Whoa, partner! That’s being rather snooty isn’t it? What does “my blog is my business” mean?

Actually I’m not being arrogant at all. What I mean to say is “I treat my blog as if it is a business.” Because – here it comes again – my blog is my business.

If you intend to generate revenue from your masterpiece then you must treat is as you would any other endeavor of this nature.

What I’m learning on my quest to becoming a six figure blogger is that I must adhere to strict rules of engagement, planning, follow-through, a positive attitude, initiative and a whole bunch of hard work. Working in this manner made me a very successful executive in the highly competitive world of semiconductors. I intend to be even more successful with rjameshorne.com.

I’ve mentioned my goals and business plan in some previous posts so I won’t repeat them here but I’ve made some good progress. After adding just 4 posts and an “about” page my Alexa rating has jumped form 5,389,519 on February 25 to 1,646,089 today. Not bad. Not bad at all. Since I’m hosted on GoDaddy, I added an affiliate link. I’m delighted to have been approved for Thesis theme affiliate program and have update the media box with a Thesis banner this morning. I’ll add Third Tribe and ScribeSEO when their affiliate programs go “live”. Products that I support may vary from time-to-time but I promise that anything promoted on rjameshorne.com is something that I use myself.

So there you have it, folks. What’s the takeaway? When you manage your posts, comment on other sites, guest post, mange affiliations and all those other things we do to get traffic and unfair share of mind, remember – “My blog is my business”!

Scribe SEO search engine optimization tool is the greatest WordPress plugin. Using Scribe SEO copyrighting tool is so easy to use that you will wonder how you created meaningful posts without it.

What does this whizzy plugin do?

It is a WordPress plugin, when used with the Thesis theme, that takes all the guesswork out of doing search engine optimization of your posts. It analyzes the relationship of your title/description/content and meta keywords on the fly and suggests changes that much be made in order to most effectively perform to the most recent search optimization best practices. It actually shows you what the search engines think you are writing about. It optimizes much faster than if you try to do it yourself after you have published the article. No more guesswork.

How is it installed?

Installation is simple. Go to Scribe’s homepage, register, pay the monthly license fee ($27 per month as of now for 30 evaluations). You will then receive an API key sent to your email address which will enable you to download the plugin. Just cut-and-past the API key and code is ready to download. Just upload the zip file to WordPress Thesis theme and that’s it.

The Benefit?

The bottom line is Scribe SEO will help push your relevant content to the top of search engines. This is the last search engine optimization copyrighting tool you will ever need.

Check it out yourself: Scribe SEO

Six figure blogger in training. That’s me. I get so jazzed to read that headline! I make more than one hundred thousand dollars per year blogging. That’s my plan with R James Horne.

The truth is, I’m not a six figure blogger. Not yet but I will be. Positive visualization, first discussed by Zig Ziglar, is a huge part of making good things happen in your life. Visualize profiting from your helpful blog posts. Write it down and read it twice per day. Say it out loud – I make my full time living as a blogger.

What’s my plan to get there? Well here’s what I’ve learned so far by following Third Tribe comments as well as other blogs from Darren Rowse, Brian Clark and many others.

I don’t think you need to spend any $$ on blog expert courses. Learn from their free ebooks.

Domain, web hosting (I selected GoDaddy) and a rad-hard WordPress theme is all you need.

I’m convinced that purchasing a well-supported theme is far better than a freebie. I can see that already with Thesis – support and great features. The directions from these guys are clear enough.

I’m feeling the same view on Third Tribe. It’s interesting to see many of the get rich quick guys whine about the monthly fee then cancel. The overriding message is that riches can’t come overnight but they really do happen if you work hard, play by the rules and offer a helpful service or product. Gee – sounds like a real business with a real business plan.

Some highlights:

• Content is king.
• Establish your brand early. Use your real name as your domain name.
• Be consistent in posts. (200-500 words, 2-3 sentences per paragraph, once or twice daily and spot-on topic)
• Post useful comments/feedback on 10 sites related to your topic on a daily basis. A few sentences of value, not just “great post”.
• Invite guest posts.
• Offer to post as guest.
• Build a mailing list.
• Ensure your topic is aimed at someone that is ready to buy now. (Assuming your motive is to make money. Hopefully, six-figure blogger status.)
• Sell products related to blog topic. Either affiliate products or your own product/service.
• Look for products with recurring commissions: subscriptions, licenses, etc.
• Forget Adsense.
• Pay-per-click is for get rich quick people and is rarely sustainable by small guys. PPC is dominated by huge budgets from retail giants.

Now I’m on the right track with this new blog. I’ve gained a huge understanding this week of what I’ve been doing wrong.

In my first post I gave an overview of why I launched R. James Horne and my business model for making a profitable business from it. Today I’m going to tell you how I will prove to you that I am a world class Pro Blogger by working my way up to an Alexa ranking that is in the top 0.5%!

Now you’re probably thinking that I’m crazy and time will tell but it is better to aim for the top rather than to aim for the middle. This blog will be a profitable business someday. A brand that I will be proud of. The blog of choice for people who want to build a strong, useful blog or website. I will make a six figure income by blogging on the site.

I hope you decide to follow me in my journey. Fee free to comment and I openly invite guest posts with a link back to your site.

For a birds’ eye view, how do I plan to get top rankings? Here is my plan:

I will follow the “Third Tribe” principles of blogging that I am learning for Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone of CopyBlogger and Chris Brogan of ChrisBrogan.com.

Short-term action plan:

Add 1-2 posts everyday, seven days per week. These posts will be crisp, relevant content of 200-500 words that will chronicle my progress towards my goal of becoming a six figure blogger. They will be helpful for you in order to mimic my success.

Comment on 10 blogging or successful business blogs five times per week.

Invite guest posts and offer to post on other blogs.

Sign up for Twitter.

Write, write write!