Self Employed Success

Jeff Cornwall has written a great blog entry this week, “Issues Entrepreneurs Face as their Businesses Grow.”

Imagine my surprise this evening when I opened my email and saw this EntireWeb Ezine that was sent an hour earlier. What’s the big deal, right?

Except that this author took my article bullets and simply re-wrote the text.

I give up. What’s the point in writing original articles if someone’s just going to borrow your whole article premise, outline and structure?

I immediately wrote back to the EntireWeb Ezine, with this comment:

“I know he re-wrote the text so this isn’t precisely copyright infringement, but he took the bullet points nearly one-for-one, which makes him a poor writer, as well as possibly unethical, and definitely un-original. I wouldn’t accept any more article submissions from someone like him, if I were you.”

I hope they fry him.

Fat chance it will do any good, but at least I got it off my chest. I also wrote to Blue Apple, which appears to be the author’s employer, but who knows, the author might own Blue Apple for all I know. They have no clear information on their site about the players in the company.

The only revenge I have is that, if this website designer can’t even come up with an original list of 10 website mistakes, how good of a designer can he possibly be? It doesn’t take a mastermind to create a “top 10″ list in their chosen profession, even if they’ve only been doing it a year. Unless, of course, you’re not paying attention.

Off the top of my head, I can think of 50 or 60 common website mistakes. Why did he have to take the 10 I had already written about?

On another note, I was just speaking with my friend Alicia Smith this evening, debating whether I should publish my upcoming six books as ebooks or paperbacks. My concern was that if I publish them as ebooks, someone could just take the PDF file and distribute it without my permission or knowledge. The more I dig into online plagiarism, the more I’m convinced that ebooks are just a plagiaristic nightmare waiting to happen.

Kauffman Foundation has published a report on the theories, applications and policies in the field of entrepreneurship:

Download a PDF version of “Understanding Entrepreneurship: A Research and Policy Report”

Wow! We woke up this morning to 14″ of snow!

I can remember when I was a little kid, how exciting it would be to wake up to this much snow. Definitely a “snow day” off of school. Lots of snowball fights and snow forts to build and sledding. Coming back inside to hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. When you’re 7 years old, this is heaven.

When I worked for Corporate America, I had that same thrill of snow storms: work would be closed! A day off to relax, read a book, snuggle with my honey.

Being self-employed in a home office sounds great. Who wouldn’t want the 10 second commute from kitchen to home office? Who wouldn’t want to update your website in your pajamas? Who wouldn’t want cats sleeping at your feet? Who wouldn’t want to look out the window and watch the hawks circling overhead as you type up a report?

But on a day like today, when all the corporate types will be staying home tomorrow and having a snow day, I know I’ll still be making that 10 second commute from kitchen to home office. Snow days have lost all their glamour.

Sigh.

Good news! Two sites complied with my request and have taken down the plagiarized page. Just four more to go (on this round, at least).