Allowing Buyers to Sell purchased articles on this site!

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Moderators: Celeste Stewart, Ed, Constant

Add clause to "Full Rights"

Poll ended at Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:24 pm

Yes
5
71%
No
2
29%
 
Total votes: 7

ldeeks
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:09 pm

Allowing Buyers to Sell purchased articles on this site!

Post by ldeeks »

I bought 2 articles today for my site. About an hour later I thought why not sell the articles on this site where I bought them, to get some of my money back. So I did, changed the author's name since I had bought the "Full Rights" and resubmitted the articles under my name. One problem my conscience got the better of me. I pulled the article before any sale was made.

Please for the sake of your author's put a clause in the "Full Rights" that states buyers may not resell the article on this site.

Excuse my grammar I am not an author that is why I buy my articles from you people.
constant-content
Site Admin
Posts: 1330
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am

Post by constant-content »

I don't really understand, but if your willing to purchase articles and resell them here you are more then welcome. Full Rights means you can resell the article anywhere including here...

With that said I think you find this approach will not work for you. You purchase the article then resell it for more and we take 35%, you would have to price the article 35% higher to even break even.
J. A. Young
Posts: 249
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2005 1:27 pm
Location: U.S.A.

Post by J. A. Young »

Oh dear. Legalities, ethics, practicalities--so much is bound up in full rights purchases. There has been a writer on the site who acknowledges doing the same thing. I don't know if (s)he resold the article(s) here, but according to what I understand the full rights license to be--it is perfectly legal--perhaps unethical--and I don't doubt it goes on, as you point out.

The problem may be practicality--I don't know how CC staff might police something like this--at least barring those already-sold articles from finding their way back to the site.

As a writer, it makes me want to reconsider my prices a bit--be sure full rights is priced high enough to allow me to sleep better knowing my hard work can be dealt with in so many creative ways. However, I still feel that once I sell that license--it's gone. It is something I can only take credit for in my heart of hearts--not that I'm all that attached; it's not a novel at any rate. But it is my work at the core. I certainly don't want to buy anyone else's full rights articles from this site just to slap my name on it and repost for an extra twenty bucks or whatever. Not only does it take away from my writing time, but it feels intrinsically wrong. Just because something is legal, doesn't make it right.

Still, I'd be interested to hear admin's take on the issue. I sell a lot of full rights so it's something I might be concerned about. --J.
constant-content
Site Admin
Posts: 1330
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am

Post by constant-content »

I put my two cents in... I really have yet to see someone do this on CC. It really doesn't make much sense you the person would lose in the end. Like I said they would have to price the article 35% higher just to break even, then to make money they would have to go at least 50% higher in order to be worth it. At this point the article is priced to high in my eyes. Sure you may be able to do one or two article this way, but you certainly won’t make a living off this.
ldeeks
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:09 pm

Here is how it works!

Post by ldeeks »

I buy “Full Rights” to the article paying no more than $20.00. I than post a copy of the article on my site. Than I resubmit the article here selling only usage rights at a very cheap price say $3-$5. I watch and only resell about 10-15 copies under my name. Keeping the article fairly “Unique” so that I still get the traffic from the search engines.

So after I resell the article 10 times I have made my money back possibly more.

I am not a scam artist, just have been working in the I.T. field for 9 years.

P.S. Dear admin - I am not trying to drive you crazy. I love your site and have freelance authors writing for me, so I may resell them here.
constant-content
Site Admin
Posts: 1330
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am

Post by constant-content »

You can do this, but the problem is many people don't purchase usage rights. Duplicate content is frowned upon in search engines, so I think you will find that usage licenses are not a great seller here.

Many webmasters know that google and other search engines punish duplicate content. Meaning that once the article is on many sites it no longer holds weight in the SE world.

Because of this UNIQUE content is the key and many webmasters know this. With that said there are some people who still buy usage licenses (newsletters, Magazines, etc). Rarely do you see the same article sell 10 times.

Again, fell free to do this its well within your rights... but I'm not sure you're going to get the results you think you will.
ldeeks
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:09 pm

Google does not punish duplicate relative content!

Post by ldeeks »

Sorry this is off topic.

Google had made a mistake last May but have corrected it now.

You can read about it here http://www.gitc.ca/content/view/85/78/

SEO is one of the many things we do at the I.T. company that I own.

Dear Site Admin - I would like to offer you a free copy of this article to help your users understand about Google and SEO.
constant-content
Site Admin
Posts: 1330
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am

Post by constant-content »

Thanks for the link, but I don't see this as entirely true. As a large site with a bunch of unrelated content CC is a perfect place for testing this kind of stuff. What I find is google tends to more or less ignore results from duplicate content except the original source.... As they don't appear in the any top results when searching for certain terms. In time with enough duplicate content even the original source drops in search results.

By the way this "Google Bombing" change happened in 2005 a lot has changed since them. Of course no one knows googles algorithm but we all test and learn until the next update :)

We do a bit of SEO as well.

#1 for: buy articles, purchase content, buy content, purchase articles, and currently working on website content.
ldeeks
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:09 pm

Post by ldeeks »

Dear Site Admin,

I agree with your last post using alot of duplicate content will hurt your rankings.

A cap of 10-15 of a certain article though will not. Agreed?
constant-content
Site Admin
Posts: 1330
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am

Post by constant-content »

I don't see this, I have seen 3 duplicate sources drop me for results after the article was producing good traffic for certain terms. This is just my experience, I used to run and operate content sites as well and learned my lessons the hard way.... Still learning the hard way :)
ldeeks
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:09 pm

Post by ldeeks »

I am still learning the hard way as well. :)

I would like to appolagize to all readers for this getting so far off the original post.
Gail Kavanagh
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2005 12:14 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Post by Gail Kavanagh »

To get back on topic, surely if the article had been purchased full rights, it couldn't be resold here on CC? The article wouldn't go through the plagiarism check for one thing, since it has been published on the web. As I understand it, having the article published on your own website is no excuse - it is still not exclusive.
Can you clarify this one, Admin?
anarch
Posts: 42
Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2005 8:14 pm

Post by anarch »

I believe they said that they were purchasing them at full rights and then turn around and sell them as useage only (I did a double-take and was thinking the same thing as you, originally, Gail).

The sad part about it is that it seems that, while we may cry unethical, this is actually a very logical thing for a purchaser to do. If s/he has bought the piece and has purchased full rights, we as writers have relenquished all rights to said article and, if s/he wishes to use it on all sorts of websites or sell it as his/her own work, we have relenquished the right to grumble about it.

The answer? Well, there is no real easy one save for not selling your articles for full rights, if you don't want someone to be able to resell it. Price articles expensive enough that it discourages the practice of buying full rights and steers buyers towards exclusive purchases, perhaps?

In all honesty, this is kind of like this purchaser going into a designer store and buying a prom dress. When s/he is done with it, should they be expected to toss it aside and forget about it? Some people will do that, but there are a lot more who will take that dress to a consignment store, a resale shop, list it in the paper or even donate it to the Salvation army. Is it unethical? No one seems to think so... it's their dress.

Just have to put it in a different perspective and it doesn't sound so terrible :)
constant-content
Site Admin
Posts: 1330
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am

Post by constant-content »

Gail Kavanagh wrote:To get back on topic, surely if the article had been purchased full rights, it couldn't be resold here on CC? The article wouldn't go through the plagiarism check for one thing, since it has been published on the web. As I understand it, having the article published on your own website is no excuse - it is still not exclusive.
Can you clarify this one, Admin?
Sure it could, just not full unique or full rights
constant-content
Site Admin
Posts: 1330
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am

Post by constant-content »

Writers, I wouldn't worry about this. If you change your prices to ensure this doesn't happen you may price your self out of a sale. 99% of the customers will not do this for many reasons (most of which I stated already).
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