Being an adult webmaster can be a lonely occupation. I have already spoken about the necessity of, but the hazards of belonging to adult webmaster forums. You need to build friendly relationships with other webmasters, just to get by, but you have to be careful.
Many adult webmasters will be hard pressed to give 'newbies' the time of day and of the others who appear to welcome your friendship, well, they split into a number of camps. There are those who are new themselves and looking for link trades (most of the 'regulars' will not want to set up links with you as it will do nothing for the popularity of their sites), there are those who are also new and hoping that you can help them, and there are those who are new and looking for mutual support in a world of harsh knocks.
Then there are the 'regulars' who will befriend you. Some of these are genuinly helpful, being generous by nature. Most are not. Some regulars will offer help in return for you signing up with their sponsors (they get a bonus every time you get a sign up) and that is okay, as they are helping you and you are helping them. But they are not your friend. This will be a business relationshiip only.
There are also the regulars I mentioned before, who will post in answer to your queries simply to 'signature link', so their 'helpful comments' will be useless at best.
As in any business field, you also get the sharks. Those who are after making a fast buck any way they can. so they see a newbie webmaster and they strike; with 'special offers', link shares to warez sites which will get you banned by all your sponsors if you take up their offers, and various other 'specialities' which you have to avoid at all costs.
But one other person to be wary of is the webmaster who appears to be generous and is helpfulness itself. These people can go out of their way to help you with advice and pieces of 'insider knowledge' which are invaluable. In fact, even in hindsight, you have to admit to yourself that they have helped you a great deal.
However, it seems that in return for their generosity they feel they have the right to take something of yours..... without asking first.
And if you thought this was building up to another rant, you are right!
Two days ago I published my first entries to this blog. They were all about my life as a 'porn pusher' webmistress, and were written from my personal experiences so far. I also thought they could be helpful to anyone just starting out in the adult webmaster business. They were not private thoughts, but they were my own summations.
This morning I logged into an adult webmasters forum and followed a link advertised by one of the webmasters to his brand new blog, published today. And there I found a slightly altered copy of my posts, set out in such a way as to give them an air of authority and, of course, 'the personal touch'.
But they were definitely my posts, just moved around slightly and polished up a little (after all, they were originally written as diary entries rather than 'authoritative texts').
Now, I could confront this person and ask them why they chose to publish my material, under their name, without even having the decency to ask me first (I wouldn't have minded if a link and a reference to my original posts had been given - but of course this would have taken the reader to my blog and away from the plagiarist's). But this person is a well established figure in the adult webmaster community, and I, in comparison, am a relative 'newbie'. Who would come off worse? Me of course.
So I will just sit and seethe about this a little. And then get on with posting my thoughts and findings to this blog. There is no point in doing anything else. The sad thing is that I had a great deal of respect for this person (and still do - for their work and advice anyway, if not for their tactics).
Never mind, they will probably be back for 'updates' for their blog, so they will read this. If they do, maybe they will think twice about doing the same thing again .... or go elsewhere for their copy ....
And as someone very close to me said today, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but there is a fine line between imiation and plagiarism.
Well I definitely don't feel flattered, so I think that line has been crossed.
First off, I am very sorry that this happened to you. I can definitely relate as I've seen it many times before.
You didn't give any details in your post about what exactly ahppened so I can't tell you what your options may be, but if you want you can email me the information and I'll have a look.
I may be able to help you get the content removed by contacting their host or at the very least get it removed from the search engines.
Let me know if you want any help, I'll gladly do what I can!
Posted by: Jonathan Bailey | October 19, 2007 at 07:41 AM