My Content was STOLEN! (A Gripe Session About Content Gather)



 Okay, so I was dumb. I mean, I know that things can easily be stolen online. But I didn't think it was going to happen to me. 

And today it did. It didn't cost me much in terms of money, but it cost me something. And I'm pretty upset about the whole thing. 

I had posted an article on Constant Content several years ago. I thought it was a damn good article, but no one bought it. So today I decided to take it off Constant Content and try it on Content Gather. 

Big mistake. 

It turned out that the article was stolen! Content Gather ran its plagiarism check, and there it was posted on some company's blog. I've contacted the owners of that blog to find out where they got my content, but I haven't had a response. 

THIS IS THE CRAZY PART: Do you know that part of Content Gather's terms of use state that you aren't supposed to upload content that was written for ANY OTHER SITE OR ANY OTHER PURPOSE? 

For me - and lots of other writers - Content Gather is a place where you can park articles that aren't selling for whatever reason and someone else may want to buy them. If you happen upon a client who could use one of those articles, you take it off the marketplace and offer it up. If the client declines, you put the content back on Content Gather. 

Nope. You can't do that... Which is kind of ridiculous because 

1. It's my content. I should be able to sell it to anyone I want. 

2. Content Gather payment - 4 cents a word or whatever it is - is not worth writing original content for. Those are recycled content rates right there. 

But... bottom line is that Content Gather can offer up any terms of use they want, and it was my own fault for not thoroughly understanding them. 

Still, I would recommend that you avoid Content Gather because as I said, the value of that kind of website for a working writer is to have a parking spot for articles. If you can't do that, there's really no point. If you're more than a beginner, you're not writing content for that kind of payment. If you are a beginner, maybe it's worth it but those are low rates. Be sure you aren't undervaluing yourself. 

After some minimal research, I have discovered that Content Gather does delete writer profiles for pretty crazy reasons and immediately. They will not contact you in advance, and they will not give back your work. You should always keep a copy of your work, of course, but it doesn't seem very smart to put more than a few articles on Content Gather at a time if all your work is just going to disappear with no notice. 

I'm going to calm down and then write a post about avoiding having your work stolen and what to do when you realize it's happened. 

Grrr...That's my angry noise. It's not very intimidating. but it makes me feel better. 



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