Being good at what you do isn’t always easy. When you put a great amount of work into your blog and make it the absolute best you can, you will get fans. Write stellar content, put out a great design, whatever it is, people will like it. Some, a little too much, and those people may cause you some concern.

Why might some of your biggest fans cause you some worry? For the plain and simple fact that they may steal your work. It hurts to see the great content you put out on your blog on someone else’s under their name. And it just kills you inside to see a custom design you have made for yourself sitting on somebody else’s blog.

I know, as I have had just about everything you see on Blogussion stolen from me. The content I spend hours writing, and even the design you see which is basically what defines my success online. All of that sitting on other people’s blogs. Isn’t it sickening?

Take a Minute and Think Back…
Have you ever gotten your content stolen? Has anyone ever stolen your work online, whether it be your blog content or something else? Try to remember how you reacted to it, and if you took any action. Be sure to share your response in the comments.

As much as it hurts you at first, getting your work stolen is not a big deal. I learned this lesson over the weekend when I received word from my followers on Twitter that a few people have taken the design you see on Blogussion for their own use.

Normally, when you hear that someone has stolen from you, you would want them to take it down. So you send emails, tweets or whatever asking them to take it down while making just about any threat you can.

Some people listen, and some people don’t. When you first start your blog, you only have to deal with a few content scrapers and thieves, so it’s not much to handle. But, once your beautiful blog starts getting older and the audience becomes much larger, dealing with thieves is a lot harder as there are so many more of them.

I asked my followers on Twitter what they do when they see that their content has been stolen, and I had a few good discussions and received some great answers from them. There were a couple that really stood out to me however (sorry, large image):

(Be sure to follow these geniuses on Twitter: @michaeldunlop, @robbsutton, @kingsidharth, imkevintan, @Aboundlessworld)

Just Let Them Be

It’s tough at first, believe me, to just let people walk away after have stolen for you. But, look at the bloggers who responded to my tweet. Two of them are six figure bloggers and have found just as much success as you can find online. There is no doubt they have been stolen from along the way, yet they turned out just fine.

And what do you think happened to those who stole from them? Nothing. They took what wasn’t theirs and in return achieved nothing. So, let them be. Keep doing your “thing” without worrying who might want to take it for their own use. Don’t waste your time trying to take down content, spend it putting more content up.

There’s Nothing to Worry About

I know one thing people are worried about when it comes to content thieves is the effect on SEO. Will Google penalize my site for having the same content as someone who stole it? I can’t be 100% sure, but I’m confident that Google is smart enough to know who the true author of the content is and penalize those who have stolen it.

But again, I am not 100% on this. There is some good discussion about this specific topic in my list of 5 things you need to stop worrying about now (#4 is content thieves).

Am I even worried that there is another blogger using the same design as Blogussion? Nope, because I know that blog will not go anywhere. I don’t even think the brand of this blog will be hurt at all, that’s how little I care.

The thieves made it very clear by stealing in the first place that they don’t know how to run a blog properly, so success will never find them.

I can’t stress how much time going after thieves wastes your time, so I’m putting this message in this nice yellow box and bolding it: Do not contact the thief, do not worry about what they are doing, just leave their blog and never go back to it again.

What do you think about this mess? Is it worth trying to take down all of those content thieves, or is it best to leave them be? Some of us are too proud of our work to just let them get away, but the sad truth is that people will always steal from you.

Related posts:

1. 5 Things You Can Stop Worrying About Right Now

Blogging is not something that “stands still,” it is always changing. Trends, strategies and beliefs are always shifting and how you stay up to date with it is your decision.

But some people are never really “alerted” to these developments in the blogosphere. Because there are already quite a large number of things to worry about on your blog, it’s probably best that you try to cut that number down as much as possible. If you’re worrying about trends and strategies that aren’t really important to your blog anymore, you will be wasting a lot of much-needed time for nothing.

I took a moment and tried to remember back to the days where this blog started, and even at past blogging ventures. I tried to remember things I worried about back in 2007 and 2008 when I really first started blogging, and how irrelevant they are now in 2010.

You don’t worry about any of the following now, right?

1. Google PageRank

I think this is the biggest thing that most bloggers and webmasters in general have stopped worrying about. I remember the days where everyone would be trying to build as many back links as possible for the sake of having a higher PageRank. At one point in time, you could use PageRank as a selling point for a domain name. Now? Not so much.

The only thing you can gain nowadays from a high PageRank is bragging rights. My buddy Rob and I were talking about the PageRank of our blogs a few weeks ago, and we both rank 4. I would like to see Blogussion hit 5 as a ranking (just to rub it in his face), but I won’t be spending even a minute trying to do it, or a second worrying about it.

Why do you think PageRank has lost its value? What was once a defining factor of a “successful website” has now been deemed virtually useless. What happened?

2. Negativity

I remember back when I created my first blog that receiving negative comments, or hearing people disagree with what I wrote about was the end of the world. Controversy was the last thing I wanted to write about, and negativity was one of my biggest fears. I think I feared it because I didn’t know how much it could help me.

I used to think that negativity and disagreement were problems, but it’s actually pure positivity and agreement that were the actual problems. When you write an article that everyone agrees with, one of the two things probably happened:

1. You wrote about a dead-obvious subject that has been overly talked about in your niche.
2. You didn’t add a unique point of view to the subject you talked about.

When I see disagreement within the comment section here, I also see success. It shows that people actually read my article, and actually took time to analyze what I said and write out an opposing opinion. That’s a lot better than seeing those comments where all anyone says is “I agree, nice post!”

3. Aggressive Competition

Is it just me, or are bloggers in the same niche actually nice to each other? Maybe I just don’t know any mean bloggers, but it seems to me that we would much rather help our “competition” than slam them nowadays.

I remember reading SEO articles that warned you not to stuff your meta tags with keywords as a blogger in your niche would report you to Google and get your site penalized. I just can’t imagine any of my friends (and most of them are in the same niche as me) doing that to me. But I don’t see myself keyword stuffing either.

Yes, competition still serves a purpose: to inspire you to keep doing good. But, your “competitors” also help you a lot too. They link back to your articles, they include you in their Blogroll, retweet you on Twitter and even want to connect with you on a more personal level. That isn’t what I remember first starting out.

4. Content Thieves

Alright, so they still bring up some worry to many of us. But nothing nearly as bad it was even a few years ago.

Content thieves (aka scrapers) are people who take your content, oftentimes word for word, and publish it to their own blog. Most do it out of ignorance and think it’s okay, and some just think they are sneaky and that it’s actually helping their site.

When content gets stolen, it becomes duplicate content, and duplicate content causes a bunch of negative effects to your SEO. So why do I think content thieves aren’t anything to worry about?

Luckily, things have changed a little. Most of the time when you contact the owner of the blog (the person who stole your content), and ask them to remove what they have stolen, they will listen. Some just need to hear you ask them to remove it, some need a warning, but there are also the few who won’t take it down. In my experience, I have never been declined when asking someone to take down what they have stolen, so some of these people do actually have a conscience.

I can’t back this up entirely, but I believe search engines have also gotten smarter when it comes to duplicate content and can often determine a scraper from a legitimate source. So, if the site that has stolen your site seems spammy, I wouldn’t worry even the slightest bit about penalization in the search engines.

5. Simple Marketing

It’s become extremely easy to carry out even the simplest marketing techniques. So there is no excuse for you to not bring in even a few readers to your blog.

Marketing has literally become as easy as signing up for a Twitter account, following a few people and tweeting. It has become as easy as leaving a comment on a blog. Those are just simple techniques, yes, but many forms marketing has become such an easy task with the web becoming a better place for bloggers.

What’s there to worry about?

I think my blogging life has become a little easier since I stopped worrying about the things I talked about above. They all were pretty important things to me when I first started, but are now trivial and meaningless to me.

So, what are some things you have stopped worrying about? I find that the more experiences you get with your blog, the fewer things you worry about believe it or not. What are your current fears and woes? I’m sure we can talk about them all day.

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In this hectic world of blogging where all we want is acceptance, we often tend to do things out of the ordinary to gain this feeling of “fitting in” and “success” into our heads.

As redemption for these things we do, it’s time for someone to stand up and make fun of these people. That’s going to be me, and in this post I will point out five funny things that we do as bloggers to give us that professional look.

Some of the things listed below are that which we do subconsciously, and others because we think someone will be impressed.

1. Referring to themselves as “we” instead of “I” or “me”

This may not be the case for some bloggers who have multi-authored blogs, but I read a lot of blogs who have just one author that often refer to themselves as “we”. I always thought this was funny, and wondered why they did it. I mean, I have done it myself a lot in my time so I can understand on some level.

Why We Do This

I think for the most case we all do this because it sounds more reassuring. Come to think of it, saying that there is a group of people trying fix a massive possibly-blog-ending problem is way better than saying one person is working on it.

But is that always the way we use it? When there’s a problem to fix? I have seen it in site slogans “We Strive For Your Success”, on About pages, “We here at…” and so many more places. Maybe it happens out of impulse – we don’t even know we do it (did I just do it!?).

2. False Labeling

We’ve all seen those annoying self-proclaimed “guru’s” before telling us how we can become an expert at the field just like them if we read their blog. The funniest thing about this is that those “guru’s” don’t know jack and instead have been preaching stuff they think might work instead of stuff that will work.

Why We Do This

It’s just like if I was to say I am “we” in a blog post, we do this to build trust and possibly a name for ourselves. No one would read a blog of the person was honest and labeled their self as “Make money online with stuff that might work”, but more people will buy into “Make Money Online with a Guru” title. It’s a shame the honest guy won’t get much attention, but I think it’s kind of funny that people buy into false titles!

3. Going Into Specific Versions

This is probably the funniest thing I will ever see in the blogosphere. People who constantly upgrade their blog feel the need to get into the specific versions. I understand “Version 2″ and whole numbers like that, but it always interested me that people would start going deeper and saying they are at Version 2.5 of their blog.

I think if you decide to “Versionize” your blog, stick to whole numbers. Unless you are developing software, plugins, or a theme – don’t get into the specifics.

Why We Do This

I know not everyone does this (hell, I know I don’t). But this is why I think people do it to feel more like developers. Developers (people who make themes, plugins, software, etc.) are usually very organized when it comes to their projects. Bloggers who are supposed to be extremely organized as well can sometimes get specific with what version their blog is at.

Even if it’s for a good cause, I always find it funny to read a headline stating that someone has just “performed heavy maintenance” to their blog (which I guarantee is not much work at all) and are now at Version 2.4.6 BETA. Adding BETA to their title always confused me more, but it’s even funnier in my opinion.

4. Part of the “Name” Network

I always thought it was cute to see people put their blog into a network of what I was promised to be “amazing super blogs”. You know how you see in some blogs footers “A subsidiary of the Whatever Network”. Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of successful networks of sites on the Internet, but there are always those networks made of like one blog.

Why We Do This

Again, so we can be looked at as more than just a blog, but as a very trusted site. People see you’re part of a network, you earn some respect (hopefully).

5. Conforming to the industry’s “standards”

I just wrote a blog post about conformity and blogging the other day. Pretty much everyone is a conformist to another blog on some level, and most of the time we don’t even know.

Why We Do This

Often, we see what others are doing as the “right” way of doing something rather than our own way of doing something. Every blogger wants success, and by looking at other blogs with that success (but what is success?) we try to copy them in hopes of getting what they have achieved.

So maybe it’s not always funny, but kind of sad.

What Are You Guilty of?

Besides point #1, what else are you guilty of? How do you think these little pet peeves I have mentioned here have an effect on your blog and how a reader intakes your message?

“Pet Peeves” Image by Zara Gonzalez

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So it’s not really an age old debate, it just sounded kind of catchy.

There is no limit as to how long you can write a blog post. You can write them as long as you want, or as short as you want. From the ridiculously long posts of Patrice Karst to the short, under 30 words posts from the Unwritten Rules of the Internet blog. You can see how bloggers feel about expressing themselves online. Some can do it in a lot of words, and some in a few.

In this post, I want to highlight the differences between long posts and short posts, and why one could be better than the other.

Shorts Posts: Pros and Cons

Shorts posts are a great way to quickly reveal your thoughts to other people. However, they often leave some things unsaid that really should have been noted in the post.

Pro: Easy to write, saves a bunch of time

Time is something everyone wants these days, but most people can’t seem to find free time. You could be busy with a job, your personal life, and of course taking care of your blog. The idea of writing a short post on your blog is the best thought in the world.

Con: Users wanting more information that you haven’t delivered

I see short posts look like rushed posts, and rushed posts lead to spelling and grammar mistakes, incorrect information, and some other gruesome things. While your time may be important, you should realize that your blog is important and handing out bad information to your loyal readers is not a good thing. It can especially be bad depending on the niche you’re in!

Pro: Short posts have a better chance of being read than long posts

It’s true, posts with shorter length will definitely be read more than a long post. What’s better than quick, informative read? Besides, there will be the group of your readers who are lazy and are just looking for those short posts. Why not feed their lazy little appetites?

Con: Did I forget to mention…?

This is a common question you will be asking yourself after a fairly short post I’m sure. It is pretty likely that you may forget a key point of idea in your post if it’s really short. Beforehand, you should map out your key ideas and summarize them really intelligently for your readers.

Long Posts: Pros and Cons

Long posts are packed full of information. While some things can get repeated, there are plenty of lengthy articles that cover tons of great points in them.

Pro: Your post will be full of thorough explanations, and will cover plenty of key points

The purpose of your blog is to inform your readers about the niche you’re in right? What better way to do that then have a long post chopped full of great information? You have no boundaries as to how many words it takes to describe something, and you probably have plenty of time to cover every single point of the topic.

Con: It’s easy to get lost in your writing, and start babbling about something unrelated. You can even start repeating yourself

You could be on paragraph 154, and say to yourself “I forgot to mention something!”. The unfortunate fact however is you already talked about it in paragraph 68, but you probably forgot.

It wouldn’t be too hard to stray off topic in the post either. You can go from talking about cats, to talking about how to change the oil in your car in one sentence I bet. It just takes one measly little comparison to get you started. Be careful of that.

Pro: Leaves plenty for readers to think about, and then some

A good blog post is a blog post that gets readers to think about what you have said. If you leave them with questions, and provide in depth information, it will cause them to want to find things wrong with what you have said and make their own opinions about it.

Con: Your post will probably take more than one time to read

While this is not always a bad thing, it’s an annoying thing. Short posts will probable just require one read, but longer ones will require more. If someone is reading your posts, things that will cause them to reread could be:

• Contradicting yourself
• Pieces of information being in wrong place
• Information not explained well enough

Just remember to always keep your post organized, watch what you say, and go into tons of detail whenever possible.

What I think

I think a post that explains the subject perfectly is a good enough post. Whether it is in 500 words, or 50 words, as long as I learn something I think the post is just right.

While this post is on the long side, I hope you have thought about how you write your posts. If you have any other pros and cons of long posts vs. short posts, let me hear it in the comments section! I will be happy to add it to the list.

Suggestions by you

• One of the important things you can do to make longer posts more readable is to break up the daunting wall of text. This can be done with pictures, dot points, bold heading etc, like this post has done. It makes a big post look smaller.

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