Does marketing plagariasm matter?

[Account Closed]

Today I found an ad on a local craigslist that lifted copy from my website or perhaps one of my marketing letters (or perhaps from CL ads posted I posted months ago). Not "I buy houses, any condition". It's a couple of hundred words, first person, in my voice, verbatim. They replaced my name and number with theirs and have been posting it continuously for the last couple of months. Then I did some searches to find that someone in Virginia is using the same copy in their craigslist ads.

I expect us all to copy each other in some way. When I start using new headlines on craigslist, I start to see others using it a few weeks later. I feel like that is fair game. I read lots of seller websites and am always looking for the best and clearest way to convey the message. But seeing copy that I've been tweaking for 10 years with someone's name after it really freaked me out. I thought I was clicking through to my own ad.

Does it matter? The phone still has to ring and you still have to make a deal, regardless of what prompted the call. But I'm not a franchise and I don't get any money for making the phone ring for someone else. I don't even get a thank you. I'm home with a bad cold/flu thing today, so maybe my perspective is off!

[Barry Hammond]

Often times, text is hijacked for the simple reason that it is very easy to scrape text from one page to another. One thing you might consider doing is converting your add to a bitmap or jpeg image. So for instance, create your ad, take a quick screen capture of your ad the way you want it to appear, save that capture as a jpeg, then post the jpeg as your ad, instead of raw text.

This won't ensure people will stop stealing your copy, but it will force them to put more effort into copying it, then otherwise. I've found that just making things difficult for would-be plagiarists, keeps many of them away.