Great Blog Entry - Issues Entrepreneurs Face as their Businesses Grow

Jeff Cornwall has written a great blog entry this week, "Issues Entrepreneurs Face as their Businesses Grow."

The Plagiarism Saga Continues (Sorta...)

Imagine my surprise this evening when I opened my email and saw this EntireWeb Ezine that was sent an hour earlier. What's the big deal, right?

Except that this author took my article bullets and simply re-wrote the text:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/articles/top-10-website-mistakes.htm

I give up. What's the point in writing original articles if someone's just going to borrow your whole article premise, outline and structure?

I immediately wrote back to the EntireWeb Ezine, with this comment:

"I know he re-wrote the text so this isn't precisely copyright infringement, but he took the bullet points nearly one-for-one, which makes him a poor writer, as well as possibly unethical, and definitely un-original. I wouldn't accept any more article submissions from someone like him, if I were you."

I hope they fry him.

Fat chance it will do any good, but at least I got it off my chest. I also wrote to Blue Apple, which appears to be the author's employer, but who knows, the author might own Blue Apple for all I know. They have no clear information on their site about the players in the company.

The only revenge I have is that, if this website designer can't even come up with an original list of 10 website mistakes, how good of a designer can he possibly be? It doesn't take a mastermind to create a "top 10" list in their chosen profession, even if they've only been doing it a year. Unless, of course, you're not paying attention.

Off the top of my head, I can think of 50 or 60 common website mistakes. Why did he have to take the 10 I had already written about?

On another note, I was just speaking with my friend Alicia Smith this evening, debating whether I should publish my upcoming six books as ebooks or paperbacks. My concern was that if I publish them as ebooks, someone could just take the PDF file and distribute it without my permission or knowledge. The more I dig into online plagiarism, the more I'm convinced that ebooks are just a plagiaristic nightmare waiting to happen.

Self Employment: The Hardest Way to Make Easy Money

I heard this comment at a National Speaker's Association meeting last month: "Being your own boss is the hardest way to make easy money." Boy, isn't that the truth!

So many people I speak with dream of becoming self employed and starting their own small business. Don't get me wrong: being self employed is the best lifestyle I know. It has a huge range of rewards, from flexibility to independence to self-responsibility. I'm completely in love with being self employed and wouldn't exchange it for a corporate job for a million dollars! (Okay, truthfully, if you want to offer me a million dollars a year in salary, I'm willing to entertain a discussion.)

But it is hard work, plain and simple. After carefully studying and working with people who start their own businesses, my best estimate is that it takes at least a year to make a serious profit, and often it's more like two years. I have yet to see a "quick fix" for small business marketing that will land a lot of cash in your pocket in 30 days. If your business structure and administrative process are not firmly in place, you'll crash and burn eventually. If your business strategy and plan are not fine-tuned, you'll spend an extraordinary amount of time running in circles trying to find the right customer and the right product or service to sell them.

So why do people look for (and purchase) products and services that promise a quick fix to their ailing small business? In the question lays the answer: they want a quick fix to the pain. Don't we all?

Running your own small business is a marathon, not a sprint. Stop trying to sprint your way to your first million without a firm foundation under you. Remember, marathoners train all year long for just one marathon; they don't wait until the month before to begin preparing.

Things to consider:

1. Make sure you have the personality to be self employed (more on that in a future blog entry).
2. Make sure you have enough money to finance your dreams, and a good financial plan that tells you when you'll actually start making a profit.
3. Invest money and time in sound, effective marketing strategies and do them every month, rain or shine.
4. Have a written business plan and a business strategy, even if it's only three pages long.
5. Test your marketing ideas, your product ideas and your service ideas to make sure you've got everything on target.

And finally, have a marathoner's attitude: the finish line does exist, just over the next hill. Believe that you will make it to the finish line, as long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other and maintain a positive attitude.

Understanding Entrepreneurship: A Research and Policy Report.

Kauffman Foundation has published a report on the theories, applications and policies in the field of entrepreneurship:

Download a PDF version of "Understanding Entrepreneurship: A Research and Policy Report"

Snow! (And why being self-employed stinks sometimes)

Wow! We woke up this morning to 14" of snow!

I can remember when I was a little kid, how exciting it would be to wake up to this much snow. Definitely a "snow day" off of school. Lots of snowball fights and snow forts to build and sledding. Coming back inside to hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. When you're 7 years old, this is heaven.

When I worked for Corporate America, I had that same thrill of snow storms: work would be closed! A day off to relax, read a book, snuggle with my honey.

Being self-employed in a home office sounds great. Who wouldn't want the 10 second commute from kitchen to home office? Who wouldn't want to update your website in your pajamas? Who wouldn't want cats sleeping at your feet? Who wouldn't want to look out the window and watch the hawks circling overhead as you type up a report?

But on a day like today, when all the corporate types will be staying home tomorrow and having a snow day, I know I'll still be making that 10 second commute from kitchen to home office. Snow days have lost all their glamour.

Sigh.

Two Sites Complied!

Good news! Two sites complied with my request and have taken down the plagiarized page. Just four more to go (on this round, at least).

Do You Know What Really Hurts?

In the continuing saga of plagiarized website text, I received an email this morning from a coaching colleague, who pointed out that there is another, fifth, site that has stolen my text. I should be immune to this pain by now, right?

Here’s the kicker, and why this particular one is so painful: this coach is an MCC (Master Certified Coach) which is the highest credential you can get in the coaching industry, a member of the ICF, and a previous client of mine.

Ouch.

===

Here's a sixth site:

This plagiarized site is just a little over the top. Not only did they steal my text, but they forgot to change the links within the stolen text to point to pages on their own site. The links in the text still point to MY site!

Okay, that's just stupid.

I can't stop laughing. This is just too dumb.

http://www.adaptivitypro.com/businesstraining/smallbusinesscoaching.htm

How To Defend Yourself When Someone Plagiarizes Your Website Text

I knew one day it would happen. Someone stole the text from my website and used it on their own website. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels!

So what do you do? First, understand that most hosting companies and domain name registrars will take down a site that is fraudulent or that plagiarizes someone else's site, as long as you can show them proof. They're on your side.

Next, gather as much information about the offending site as you can. Print out all pages from their site where the plagiarized text resides. Go to http://www.internic.net/whois.html and get all their registration information. Also, try http://www.alexa.com/ and find whatever information you can there. I'll write more in a few days on the explicit tasks necessary in this research phase.

Finally, write to the offending site owner and tell them that you found plagiarized text on their site. List the URLs of the offending pages along with the copyrighted URLs of your own pages. Give them two or three days to either delete the pages, or re-write them so that they no longer include your text. This is not the time to play nice guy! Tell the offending site owner that you are copying their hosting company and domain registrar on the letter, and do so.

Make sure when you write this email or letter, you don't use any passive language, and do not say "please". Demand your rights. It is illegal and unethical for them to do what they did and they need to stop doing it immediately. I'll post a sample letter in the next few days.

Always put a copyright statement on your site. If it took you a long time to write your text, you should be the only one benefiting from it, not some unethical person who is looking for a shortcut.

I have written to the four sites that stole my text. Two of them are in Australia. Did they really think because they were on the other side of the world that I couldn't find them by doing a simple Google search?

And you want to know a real hoot? One of these people actually called me, asking about becoming one of my clients! I'm sorry, but how dumb is that? I went out to her site and saw my text on it!

I will be posting their websites here in this blog if they do not fix the problem immediately. I'm not afraid of a little publicity, but I bet they are!