Some of the VA forums I belong to have recently had discussions about new VAs who are copying the content of more established VAs and placing it on their website, unchanged. It is plagiarism and as far as I know, that isn’t legal. It certainly isn’t moral and can be very upsetting for the owner of the content.

Why does this happen and what can be done about it?

Well, it happens for a number of reasons. People like what they’ve seen and want to copy it as it will make them look more professional from the start. Whilst copying can be seen as a form of flattery, the reality is that copying content is breaking copyright – the right of the owner who owns that copy. We all know that there are probably only so many ways to explain what a Virtual Assistant is for example, but if someone is going to copy the explanation from another site, they should seek permission to do so and then acknowledge where the content came from.

What about when an entire copy of pages has been done, right down to business name, fees and so on? This is not only upsetting for the owner but is going to cause major problems for the person who did the copying. After all, when someone starts out in business they should be doing all the homework that helps them determine why and how they’re going to operate their business. You know, that business plan thing. So, if someone copies the rates of another VA, how do they know that those rates are going to be right for them? Have they verified that their own experience and skills match those of the person they’ve copied? Is their cost of living in their area the same as that of the person whose site they’ve copied? Not only that, how do they explain to prospective clients the way they operate and provide services? Not to mention the loss of credibility they’re going to experience when people discover that their site is a copy of another site elsewhere – this can often be discovered when the source of the website is viewed and that often reveals that the content has been copied from elsewhere.

When you are new in business thinking about how you’re going to operate, what services you’re going to provide, how you charge rates and so on is all part of the process of the business planning and development. If you copy that information from elsewhere and not put the thought and planning into it, you’re going to come unstuck. Not only that, your ethics will come into question, not just from your clients but also from the VA community in general and you’ll find yourself ostracized. Not a good start to your new career!

For those who believe their site has been copied there are things you can do. Firstly, you should contact the owner of the other site – they might not know that what they have up there has been copied from your site – especially if they’ve engaged someone else to do their site, which is often the case. A well-meaning friend or family member is shown examples of sites by the site owner, and they simply just go in and copy and paste content (and sometimes the design) and purchase a similar sounding domain name, and voila! They have an online presence. In most cases the owner will be suitably embarrassed and apologetic and get it changed quickly.

You could contact the web host and advise that a site they’re hosting has stolen content – they might decide to intervene.

But if the owner of the site doesn’t remove the content you might have to contact a solicitor to send a ‘cease and desist’ letter on your behalf.

Sites you can visit online that might help you protect your content are:

Copyscape – You can use this service to see if anyone has copied your content and then elect to use their service to protect your content.

Plagiarism.org – Worth exploring as you can find out about different technologies to assist you.

WaybackMachine – This will help verify the content of your site and how long ago it was up there. My own site has been growing since April 1996 – the earliest it shows on this website is December 1998 – boy am I glad it doesn’t look like that now!

Google Alert – I use this to alert me when content, key phrases or even my name is published on the web somewhere so I can track any references to my business or myself.

Article Checker – this is new and not yet proven, but if it does what I think it does, it will assist in proving who the first was to post content on line.

Your own web stats will most likely alert you to when your website has been copied and saved on someone’s hard drive. It amuses me to see I’ve had registered hits viewing my site, referencing ‘caroline’s c drive’ or similar. They haven’t removed my counter coding and I immediately know what’s taken place and keep an eye out for any new possible site uploads that might mean my website is about to be copied online elsewhere.

And finally, some advice from ‘Random Lawyer’ about copying. He advises not to do it!

Above all, as a website owner, it means we need to remain vigilant and be aware that some ‘copying’ is an innocent action and not full of malicious intent but there are some out there simply in the race for financial gain and they’ll do anything they can to get it. If you are going to follow up someone who has copied your content, it would be best for you to print a copy of their site so you have that for evidence should you need it. KMT

virtual assistant, building a VA business, website copying, content copying, copyright, Copyscape, plagiarism

Regularly on the chat forums, I see new VAs seeking advice for getting clients. I recently posted the following on one of those forums.

As with any business, marketing is an important part of what you should be doing regularly, at least weekly. This could be in the form of paid advertising, networking, calling people, going out and meeting people, doing leaflet drops, registering with directories online and so on. I’ve never found advertising in a local publication useful but that can differ from area to area. I do have an advert in the Yellow Pages and have had since 1995. I have both a locality listing and a general listing for wordprocessing and secretarial services but also have a number of other things in the advert as I’m not just advertising for myself but for my whole team. We’ve been getting clients from the Yellow Pages every year consistently and get calls almost every week because of the adverts.

A website is useful because a number of people aren’t going to look for you through the traditional print methods but will look for you online – so it is important to capture the attention of both client types. However, if you do set up a website, it’s important you learn a bit about setting up the keywords and descriptions and make sure the website is listed with the search engines so people can find you when they are looking. And there are a good number of VA directories and business directories that you can list with – and not all of them need you to have a website so why not list with them anyway? You might just pick up clients from online too.

For all new VAs, the above will help you in your business. Joining local business networks is definitely a good move – a Chamber of Commerce, or other similar business network groups will work for you but you need to start meeting the members on an individual basis (one-on-one meetings) so they get time to learn more about you and get to know you and vice versa. Before long, they will start referring work to you – relationship building is very important also. KMT

virtual assistant, virtual support, VA, marketing your business, advertising for your business, business networking, relationship building

If you’ve had any contact with a business coach, or if you do a lot of reading about operating a business, you will be familiar with the need to work on your business, instead of just in it. Michael Gerber mentions this in his book – The E-Myth as well – I read his book many years ago.

When I first started my VA business many years ago I did anything that came along on any day it came – even weekends and evenings. As my business picked up, so did the hours I was doing and for quite some time I was putting in 7 days a week. Eventually though I began to pull back on that and decided I wasn’t doing any client work on Sundays, and then eventually Saturdays. I do still spend those times reading, writing, researching, ‘playing’ through experimenting with things for my business, but I don’t do client work.

This year I have decided to aim for taking Fridays off but I know it will take a while to achieve that so am currently aiming for every second Friday and have blocked them out in my diary. The idea is to spend Fridays, instead of the weekend, working on my business, doing the reading, writing, experimenting, updating, etc. I hope I will achieve that.

This week I’ve booked an appointment on the Friday… to have lunch with my husband in the city! KMT

virtual assistant, virtual support, VA, work ON your business, work IN your business, business coach