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You Hired Someone To Write Your Website Content-Now What

By
Real Estate Agent with Integrity Real Estate Group

Copyright Cartoon from iClipArt.comYou are proud of your new real estate website.  The company who helped build your site sends out an annoucement for you. It's picked up by Google and appears in a Google alert.  Another Realtor® opens the link to see what all the excitement is about.  That's when it happens.  You get an email saying "please remove my content from your website."  You are shocked.

The excuse you use in your reply is "we hired a third party" to write our content, we had no idea.  Unfortunately you aren't the first Realtor® who has used that reason as why the content on your site isn't original and you probably won't be the last.

Besides immediately removing the content from your website to avoid a copyright lawsuit, what recourse do you have against the person you hired to write your content?  It's a question anyone who hires a third party to write their website should be asking. 



Does the contract you are signing state the content will be original?

What are the penalties if it isn't? 

Will they give you a refund of your fee? 

Will they cover attorney fees or a copyright infringement lawsuit?

As excited as you may be with your new site you may want to take the extra step to run your website through Copyscape or another content checker to see if your "original" content pops up somewhere else.  If it does check it out.  The bottom line falls on you.   It's your name and contact information on the website another Realtor® sees.  You will be the one with the attorney letter in your hand and facing the penalities that U.S. Copyright law allows, not the third party you hired.  Think about it before you go live with your new website.



Posted by

                                   Real People*Real Lives*Real Estate

If you are interested in learning more about the Northern Virginia Real Estate market including Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax and Prince William Counties give Cindy Jones and Integrity Real Estate Group a call at 703-346-2213.

Military Relocation Specialist serving military families relocating to and from the Pentagon, Fort Belvoir, Quantico MCB and all of the Military District of Washington installations. 

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Check out www.varealestatetalk.com and www.cjrealtygroup.com for more information.

Integrity Real Estate Group
 
Real People*Real Life*Real Estate

Licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia



 

 

Comments (89)

Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Praful-I will say the site I came across was a KW site built by a recommended vendor from KW.  However my understanding was the content was written by a virtual assistant.  Don't know if they were from the same company or another one.

Emmary-I use iClipart and iStockphoto when I don't have a photo or graphic of my own.

Anthony-I'm surprised we don't hear about more litigation over this type of issue. 

Kay-they hide nicely behind the name on the website and could be protected by their contract.

Cliff-I have years worth of content from blog posts.  So I don't have a problem, it seems others like it as well.

Nov 12, 2011 12:02 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Tammy-thanks for admitting a mistake and glad you understand the value of original content.

Pat-you have mad skills when it comes to writing and have a book to prove it.

Maria-I'm always surprised when someone else wants my content.

Kyn-my site is a WP site, which I think more and more agents are moving to as it can mimic a full website with easier coding.

Pamela-nicely said.  It could be an expensive proposition.

Nov 12, 2011 12:07 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Joni-you would hope the website developer would have legal use of the photos but you never know.

Cheryl-copyscape does a reasonable job of identifying potential issues>

Michael-time to read the small print when you are hiring a third party content provider.

Bryan-and good content it is.

Justin-a good approach to take.

 

Nov 12, 2011 12:10 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Tamara-I see articles copied from other sources on AR on a regular basis.  It's sad but AR can't keep up with it all.

Marte-thank you for your comment.  I'm glad you understand the value of what should be in the contract and WOW I too would hope the agent who paid for the content would be screaming bloody murder about now.

Doug-so far the other agent has removed a portion of the content from their site.  Hoping the rest will be gone within the timeframe I requrested.

Nov 12, 2011 12:20 PM
Hans J. Schindhelm
HJS Web Design - New York, Westchester, Putnam & Rockland - Tarrytown, NY
Realty Marketing, Web Site Designer & Virtual Assistant

Hi Cindy... any really good Web Site Designer, Producer, Customizer or Virtual Assisitant will write for and or customize the materials in your site geared towards your farming area and the services you provide... canned content is usually only provided by templated web sites and content mills... templates should always be emptied of the canned content and be replaced by custom material... and you should never fall for the low cost content mills that sell the same materials over and over... best is to research and hire someone qualified that is local and writes only original customized materials for each of his/her clients... the same goes for graphics and such...

Nov 12, 2011 03:59 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Hans-thank you for your input.  I agree that you should replace canned content.  The content copied from my website by the "virtual assistant" was custom content I had written myself.  So unfortunately the agent who hired this V.A. didn't get what they paid for in my opinion.

Nov 12, 2011 11:02 PM
Phil Leng
Retired - Kirkland, WA
Phil Leng - Retired

Hi Cindy,

You stirred up a lot of interest with this post.

Do it yourself.

Hire it done.

Decisions that every business owner faces.

PHil

Nov 13, 2011 12:46 AM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Phil-absolutely.  And if you are going to hire it done you need to make sure your contract protects you if it turns out to be a copy.

Nov 14, 2011 01:54 AM
Ralph Janisch ABR CRS Broker
Janisch & Co. - Conroe, TX
Selling Northwest Houston to good people like you!

That's exactly why we write all our own original content.  After all we know our market and our qualifications far better than some yahoo in timbuktu!!

 

Nov 16, 2011 03:33 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Jeanne and Ralph-it may be time consuming but no one knows what we want to say better than ourselves.

Nov 17, 2011 01:49 AM
Lisa Wetzel
RE/MAX Realty Affiliates - Carson City, NV
CDPE, SFR carsonvalleyland.com

This happened to me ... we have an article that we wrote about 5 years ago about Homesteading you home in Nevada.  We have blogged it on various sites and it's been published and updated in local publications many time.  When I contacted the agent she was mortified!  Not only was she sorry about the mistake but she was hopping mad because she had paid a pretty price for the "right" to use the article.  They ended up pressing charges against the individual ... who by the way was an ActiveRain member.

Nov 19, 2011 01:13 PM
Karen Anne Stone
New Home Hunters of Fort Worth and Tarrant County - Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Real Estate

Cindy:  In addition to running into the "duplicate content" that can easily occur when you hire someone to write the content for your blog... really, for me, one of the purposes of my writing my blog is for folks to get to know the real me.  Building a relationship here, is key.  How can that happen when what your readers are reading... isn't about the real you.

I guess it might be likened to my placing a "personals" ad... and using Julia Roberts' picture instead of my own.  What's the point ?

Nov 19, 2011 01:19 PM
Chandler Real Estate Liz Harris, MBA
Liz Harris Realty - Chandler, AZ
#ChandlerRealEstateAgent

I feel like there is so much more that we need to be aware of than ever before!

Nov 19, 2011 01:23 PM
Jon Zolsky, Daytona Beach, FL
Daytona Condo Realty, 386-405-4408 - Daytona Beach, FL
Buy Daytona condos for heavenly good prices

Cindy - I came from the reblog by Lynn, and wow, what a situation. In my infinite naivette, I did not think that something like that may happen, even though I now see that chances of this happening are quite high

Nov 19, 2011 01:37 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Lisa-the internet has made it easy for anyone to do a quick grab and go of our content.  Hope you were able to get some compensation from the person who stole your work.  And a member of AR no less.  I would have raised a huge red flag to the AR staff.

Nov 19, 2011 11:40 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Karen Anne-funny you mention using a fake photo on your blog.  We have one of those on AR (maybe more) where the photo is of one of the cast of Twilight.  I'm with you blogging is about who you are and letting folks get to know you.  A ghost writer can't do that at all.

Nov 19, 2011 11:42 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Liz-we have to be diligent these days and keep checking to see where our content is going.

Nov 19, 2011 11:43 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

JOn-Unfortunately it does happen to plenty of folks.  Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Thanksgiving week.

Nov 19, 2011 11:45 PM
Praful Thakkar
LAER Realty Partners - Andover, MA
Andover, MA: Andover Luxury Homes For Sale

This may not be the only reason why I will not hire anyone to write MY blog!

Dec 30, 2011 07:33 PM
Cindy Jones
Integrity Real Estate Group - Woodbridge, VA
Pentagon, Fort Belvoir & Quantico Real Estate News

Praful-I'm sure there are many reasons not to hire someone to write your blog for you.  Happy New Year.

 

Dec 30, 2011 11:59 PM