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Can You Imagine Hiring A Home Stager With Zero Creativity?

Can you imagine hiring a home stager with zero creativity?

I couldn't. Not if I were a homeowner, an agent, a Realtor, or an investor. A home stager should, in every sense of the word, be one of the most creative people you ever meet. Why? Because you're entrusting them with a valuable asset, your home. You'll need to trust that they have the capability to set your home apart; that they have the skill set AND the creativity necessary to do so.

I suppose I should take it as a compliment when I find web sites of other stagers that have the exact same layout (from the revolving pictures on each page to the side by side pictures of the before and afters nestled nicely by the testimonials). It's almost like they took my web address and passed it over to their web master and said; "Duplicate this, please. See, she's one heck of a successful stager and I want to be just like her." My take - this individual lacks the ability to be creative and left with no recourse, makes it easy by simply duplicating. Shameful!

Sure, I can and have been inspired by many other stagers here in Active Rain and elsewhere. However, I have enough confidence in my abilities that I don't need to duplicate what others have done.

So... finding myself a little blown away by the nerve of it all, I went over to Copyscape, which is a site you can use to see if anyone has duplicated the verbiage from your site and lo and behold, there are two other less-than-creative-and-think-it's-okay type individuals that have copied, verbatim the words off of my site. It's not the first time and I know it won't be the last.

But for the record, it's not okay to duplicate my work. Whether you're just starting out or have been at it for two years and are still struggling, it's NOT okay to copy.

So for the home stagers out there that need to rely on others for their creativity - time to find yourself another profession.

For the home owners, agents, Realtors, investors, etc.... the work you see on my web site is mine. The layout, the words, the pictures, they're all mine. I'm proud of what I do and put an incredible amount of effort into each of the staging projects I've had the good fortune of staging.

Kathy Nielsen - The Atlanta Georgia Home Stager who takes pride in her work!

P.S. And if you're truly interested in seeing who was nervy enough to duplicate, please feel free to email and I'll gladly provide you with the names.

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About the Author: Kathy Nielsen, a nationally recognized leader within the home staging industry, offers affordable home staging solutions to help sell your home more quickly. Kathy can be reached via email at info@homestagingatlanta.com or by phone at 678 522 8392. Their Atlanta Home Staging services offer a variety of options to accommodate all budgets. For more tips on how to showcase your home, visit our AtlantaHomeStagerInfo blog.

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Posted by Kathy Nielsen Atlanta Georgia Home Stager on 04/10/2009 03:25 PM

Comments (27)

Plagiarism in the ActiveRain Channel

plagiarism, home staging atlanta georgia

Originally posted at: Atlanta Georgia Home Staging : Can You Imagine Hiring A Home Stager With Zero Creativity?

Post is included in group: The Art Of Marketing You
Post is included in group: Staging "Before" & "After" Pictures
Post is included in group: Stagers Open Forum
Post is included in group: Stage It Forward...
Post is included in group: Realtors®

27 Comments on Can You Imagine Hiring A Home Stager With Zero Creativity?

APR

Kathy ~ I've been reading these posts when they crop up and can't believe that people do this to others in the profession, never thinking it would happen to me. In February someone did copy my website and it turned out to be someone who had e-mailed me about our local Interior Design Society group AND who I welcomed to one of our meetings with a big hello. Since then I have decided to check on my site every month (also through copyscape).

The funny thing is when I e-mailed a "you copied my website, I have a copyright listed on each page and I want it down by Monday", she responded in such a way that made it like she was doing me a favor!

Unfortunately, there are always going to be new people coming into the business and this type of thing will continue to go on.

Kathy P - I'm sorry to hear that it happened to you as well. How could she have thought she was doing YOU a favor leaves me scratching my head? Unbelievable.

Like I said in the post, these stagers, or rather wanna-be stagers, obviously lack creativity! How sad for them.

Kathy

Funny how I have heard the same thing that Kathy P. posts from others who have had their websites plagiarized. How very sad indeed!!!

Kathy N. - I certainly can understand why others would want to copy you, but for shame that they actually did.....

Kathy, it never ends with the copying does it?!! Well you are awesome and the those that copy you are thinking they are in the same league? Copying just put them lots of rungs down the ladder they are trying to climb :)

Kathy: Sadly, I think this is the way some of us will be spending valuable time...tracking down people, thieves really, who think it is OK to steal the hard work and creativity of others. Clearly they weren't taught, or were too ignorant to learn, that plagiarism is not OK. I'm sorry this happened to you. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have discovered someone has plagiarized by web site, blog posts or stolen my photos to claim as their own.

BTW, let me know if these scofflaws are RESA members. As you know, RESA members must adhere to a code of ethics that does not look kindly on plagiarism or copyright infringement.

Hi, Melissa - It really irks me that they don't have enough confidence in their own abilities to make their own site unique. Instead, they have to copy someone else? To me, it speaks volumes of the person.

Wendy - They are trying to be in the same league. And evidently, they think that by copying the things I do that that will skyrocket them to the top. It won't work. I've seen their portfolio and they aren't good. And last but not least, I agree, copying put them many rungs down the ladder!

Kathy

I had the same thing happen - one was my husband's website that I personally designed and wrote - a guy in Ohio used pages of it word for word, and my own website had paragraphs lifted from my home page. When I called them, the woman I spoke with said, "Well, you do know we're in Florida, right?" As if them being in another state made it ok to take the text that I had written and use it on their own site. The Ohio guy blamed it on his web designer (and did take it down right away) although I kind of doubt the web designer did it because when I asked my web guy about that - he said that his company very rarely provides content - they do layout and links and stuff like that. That's what they did for me - I wrote everything and provided all the content such as photos and logos.

It's aggravating and annoying - but some people just don't get it, do they? It's one thing to get ideas - completely another to cut and paste.

Kathy ~ this is a sad and apparently growing trend. This week I did a Copyscape check and found that a local stager in my area (Portland OR) who's a RESA member had plagiarized my site too! She did agree to delete it, as a matter of fact she's taken her site down "until she can look into it." This is the 4th local stager who's copied my site, and some others in various parts of the country have as well. I'm glad you wrote this post and I hope it will be read by many others .... this needs to stop. As Michelle said above, it's theft, pure and simple. You spent a lot of time, talent and effort on your site and I'm sure you didn't intend to make it available to anyone but your clients!

APR

Pure, plain disgusting! Why can't people be HONEST!!!! How can they sleep at night?

Wow, this is horrible to say the least!

Kathy, I just wanted to let you know the link to copyscape was not working. I was going to pop over to check my site again, because I have been through this before. Last time I found my photos on another stagers site they pulled off Active Rain. They blamed it on the web guy!

Hi Kathy, unfortunately this rears its ugly head out again and again and it's often hard to track down and force others who blatantly steal to stop and remove our property. Legally you can take action but who has the time and resources?

This has happened to me on a "phantom" home staging website that basically sells ad space but they copied verbatim my entire first page from my website. I'm working on having them remove it but they're not even selling staging services - just ad space - it's weird. Anything for a buck it seems but those who want to build a solid reputation build it on their own merit not by plagerizing from others. I know it's said that imitation is the highest form of flattery and I get it to a degree, but trying to pass of someone else's work as you own, is just plain theft.

I'm sorry this happened to you.

I just went through CopyScape again, as I do every month, and again found that someone had copied one of my blogs verbatim. So much so that they didn't notice to change MY COMPANY NAME to their own ~ morons!

For those of you who haven't noticed, CopyScape now also does "batch searches". Instead of entering each and every page of your website or blog, you can simply enter the home page info & CopyScape will search the ENTIRE site. You can even enter several homepage sites and it will search everything all at once. It still charges a per-page fee ($.05), but it's MUCH faster and easier.

When I first started out 7 years ago I looked at other web sites to get an idea of what others were doing so that mine wouldn't look like someone else's. I took a ot of time working and reworking the wording so that it wouldn't mimic what had already been said. Then one day I discovered that an interior designer who was nearby had lifted my exact wording on several of her web pages. I was stunned and very upset. I didn't confront her, though I should have. By that time I had been thinking about redoing my web site so I did and sent a fair amount of time reworking the wording once again. I have kept an eye on her's from time to time and she changed hers about a year ago. Wonder who she copied this time?

Copyscape is a wonderful source. Thank you so much for this post!

Oh, and as infuriating as your experience was, Connie, isn't it a little funny that they didn't change the name on the pirated blog? Talk about Morons on Parade!

APR

Kathy this has happended to me so many times and it is so frustrating. I have been copied and pster word for word at least 7 times that I know of! I get sick of chaing people down and making them remove my content.

BTW - I saw that I am one of your favorite bloggers and I am honored!!

Kathy - I also spent a lot of time designing my site and I feel that is part of the unique creative image I want to project online. I need to check Copyscape and make it part of my regular routine.

The only thing I can say is what goes around comes around. People who steal from others creativity will not last in the staging and redesign business for long.

It's too bad we have to spend precious time protecting something that is ours to begin with. Thank you for the reminder.

Kathy - I just took a look at your web site and it is awesome - I can see why someone would want to recreate that for themselves. I am sorry that someone has violated a basic trust - don't use what is not yours. For as frustrating and wrong as plagarism is, take heart that imitation is a form of flattery! That certainly doesn't make it right, but know that if you weren't as talented as you are people wouldn't care what your web site looked like, much less try and copy it.

Kathy,

Thank you for the information on copyscape. I am sorry to hear about your work. It actually brings me back to high school years ago when a student in my class erased my name on an assignment and used it as her own. I was confronted about not handing in my assignment when I clearly stated that I did and when the teacher discovered that this student's work mimicked my writing she was caught with plagerism.

It is very frustrating when you work on whether it be a website, blog entry or column and find out that it has been stolen from you. We are all trying to achieve our goals but, we must achieve them in a way that is hard working, trustworthy and fair.

Lisa Collymore

highstylebydesign.com

Exactly, this has happened to me several times, and I just found one tonight. She changed the words just enough that it wasn't exact, but it was exact enough for me. I've often said people that copy anything you do shows a lack of creativity. Flattery is different.

APR

sad sad sad. When I find one I send a very official email letter and copy RESA and my website designer since my site is copyrighted. I will email you a letter I send people- it is very official.

What amazes me the most are the stagers that tell me their website designer did it! I am sorry but the last time I checked the stager owned the business and was responsible for what was on the site. Now you have reminded me that I need to check mine again! So sorry to hear it happened again. KH

oh I forgot to mention-

A month or so ago I found my info on a stager's site so I called the stager to talk to her about. She told me that she was a mom, worked another job and it was really hard to own your own biz so that is why she "borrowed" my info- she did not have the time to do her own site. Not only did this make me angry- it made me laugh since I had to start my own biz 5 years ago and there was no one to even copy from back then! I took pity on her and told her that she could buy my copy for $500 right then and there. She opted not to! So when I got off the phone I ran her site through copyscape- not my site- the site that she copied and guess what I found? Her site came up with 7 hits of other people's sites she borrowed from! That is some nerve! I emailed those people to let them know. I am not a tattletale but let's get real people- how can consumers and our peers take us seriously if we do not take ourselves seriously?? You may want to run the offenders site and see what you come up with. KH

Kathy I agree,

A tremendous amount of time goes into building a great website. When you do the work yourself it demonstrates your creativity to others. To many people are looking shortcuts to business sucess and it is usually the customer ends paying for it.

This crops up more and more here on AR. I agree, we should be reporting them to RESA if they are members.

Thanks everyone for your support. In my opinion, trust and integrity are two very important features of persons character. When learning that I had my site duplicated by wanna-be's, it's not only disturbing, it's an eye-opener as well. The tools are there for us to identify the duplicate content. Copyscape (link should now be working) IS an excellent tool. And like Connie said, the batch process makes it very easy. As for layout, if you suspect someone, then I would suggest going out to their site and see what you can learn. Hopefully, you'll be more fortunate than I was.

Thanks again for the support.

Kathy

Kathy: It is very frustrating, but is aparently part of the industry. For all of us who call this a professional career, it is frustrating. I recently spent the whole winter (slow) months re-inventing everything: logo, website. It took a crazy amount of time and I am still fine-tuning it.

Kate: Wouldn't it have been fun to start out in the business and copy everything everyone else did? When I started, I did everything on my own: EVERYTHING! As most of you, we learned the hard way, making many mistakes, finding out what method works best for whatever situation. To this day, I have a hard time when the phone rings with a "wanna be" who thinks it would be fun to stage, and they can spend some time with me to learn.

All the BEST to everyone from the Great Pacific Northwest.

APR

Your post inspired me to run my website through copyscape - found a stager that copied my services page word for word (and here I thought I needed to do some editing here but hadn't made the time)! When I contacted her she said she was new and it was an "overlap" -- she is an ASP and a member of IASP and only when I threated to report her to these organizations did she remove my work.

Like I told her - if she would have asked, I probably would have let her copy it with some minor modifications - she is across the country and I really don't care -- but don't steal it! I've allowed stagers to use some of my photos (with us identified), portions of blogs and promotion materials to give them ideas -- all because they asked and I'm happy to save them some time if I can

MAY

If you remember awhile back, I needed to change MY WHOLE SITE because another stager on AR stole my wording...WORD FOR WORD. Now it was not just a coincidence because I used an analogy that I have not seen anywhere else. It was quite unnerving and upsetting.

I now talk a litle about that when giving presentations. I mention that all my work is MY WORK, no stock photos, check referrals, credentials, photos, etc of stagers that they are meeting. Everyone is jumping on staging bandwagon, buyer beware..

I am meeting with a realtor today, that is so FURIOUS with what a stager did to her OWN HOME which is for sale that she is threatening to sue her. While this stager spoke of decluttering and removing personal items, she went ONE STEP FURTHER to actually start THROWING OUT this client's personal items..photos and all!

It is upsetting to me to see this. So many people today think just by watching HGTV you now have the right to start "STAGING" Everyone home, client and situation is unique. If we are not creative beings as well as compassionate and caring for our clients needs, we should NOT BE IN THIS BUSINESS AT ALL!

Helping the client sell their home and get through the process should be our main goal, and at times it will require ALOT OF HAND HOLDING!

Great post

Phyllis Pafumi

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