JaypeeOnline » plagiarism

Watch Out For Bogus Freelance Content Writers

Jaypee Habaradas — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:37:03 +0000

Inviting guest bloggers or hiring freelance content writers to write articles for your blog is one way to maintain the consistency and add variety to a successful and growing blog or help a blog owner who’s too busy to maintain the blog. In case you find yourself in this situation and decide to hire freelance content writers, make sure that you choose carefully and watch out for bogus freelance content writers.

Klaus of TechPatio recently wrote about his unfortunate experience with a freelance content writer who goes by the name Pranav Jain. Klaus was contacted by Pranav on September 2nd, with an offer to write articles for TechPatio. Both parties exchanged emails and agreed on a price/fee for a 500 word article on “blogging tips“.

Pranav wanted the payment upfront and sent Klaus his PayPal email address. Klaus sent the money via PayPal and waited for Pranav to submit the article. The article was submitted an hour later and when Klaus checked the article, he felt suspicious with the writing style and decided to run the article through Copyscape to check whether it has been copied from another source. The Copyscape results showed that the article was indeed copied, not from another blog or website but from 2 eBooks or PDF documents released in 2008. The first part of the article was taken from “Blogging Essentials” written by Karina Wright and the latter part of the article was copied from “Top Performing SEO/SEM Strategies” aka “Quick and Dirty SEO-SEM” by Rendall Wright.

Klaus tried to file a dispute with PayPal but the writer – Pranav, claims that he wrote the article himself and never copied it from another source. Since the transaction was done under electronic goods or services, it is considered as an intangible good and PayPal can’t do anything about it. Klaus has lost his money but learned a valuable lesson from this experience. Thank you Klaus for sharing this incident and warning us about bogus freelance content writers.

Be careful if you receive any offers coming from freelance content writers whom you don’t know. In case you decide to accept an offer make sure that you DO NOT pay upfront! Request for a copy of the article and check it. Run it through Copyscape to make sure that it wasn’t copied from another source on the Internet. Also, warn your blogging friends and other bloggers about this. I hope this article will keep you from falling victim to bogus freelance content writers.

Anyone here had a similar experience or know someone who also fell victim to the same kind of tactics used by bogus freelance content writers? Please share your thoughts.

Weekend Roundup #36

Jaypee Habaradas — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:48:11 +0000

Hello people! Hope everyone’s having a great weekend. Sorry if I wasn’t able to publish a roundup last week. I was very busy the whole weekend and I also got sick for a couple days which is also the reason why I wasn’t able to publish any new posts until the end of the week. To make up for that, I’m making sure I post this week’s edition of the Weekend Roundup early. Hope you guys like it.

Blogging

Technology

Gadgets

Pinoy Blogs

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or want your article or find an interesting story that you want to be featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Thank you for your time and hope you guys have a great week!

Weekend Roundup #33

Jaypee Habaradas — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:35:58 +0000

How was your weekend? Mine was good, nothing extraordinary but it was kinda special because I got to spend a lot of time with my family. Most weekends we’re busy with church activities, attending a birthday party or wedding or some gathering. Hope everyone had a fun and safe weekend. Anyways, here’s little bit late edition of the Weekend Roundup. Hope you guys like and learn from the links I provided. Enjoy!

Blogging

Technology

Gadgets

Pinoy Blogs

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

Thank you for your time and hope you guys have a great week!

Weekend Roundup #5

Jaypee Habaradas — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:45:52 +0000

I’ve been very busy the past few days that I wasn’t able to post that much but I made sure that I would be able to publish this week’s roundup because I know you guys are expecting it. So here it is, enjoy!

Eli prefers WidgetBucks than Google’s Adsense and Marhgil says goodbye to Amazon and welcome to Widgetbucks. I’ve heard and read about WidgetBucks but I haven’t tried it yet, I guess I’ll have to try it one of these days.
My friend iRonnie is disappointed with local telcos in the Philippines and how they extort customers with early termination fees.
Check out this video presentation on how to deal with plagiarism over at Plagiarism Today.
Is podcasting dead? Arnold Gamboa believes otherwise and enumerates several reasons at Pinoy Tech Blog.
Don’t you hate it when your gadgets gets scratches? Here’s a “no scratch” solution.
Dona’s tip on how to style author comments in WordPress.
Learn how to take advantage of the traffic upsurge with Karlo of PinoyBlogero.

In another note, I’d like to express my condolences to the family of Joseph Michael G. Racoma, the youngest son of Filipino blogger J. Angelo Racoma who passed away in the morning of October 3. He was one month and thirteen days old. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.