When you’re hiring a writer, what’s your first and foremost concern? Are you primarily concerned about us stealing someone else’s work, or do you care about finding someone who can produce something fantastic, something that really speaks to your core customer base? If your answer is the former, I’ve got news for you. You’re making the real pros look the other way.
Now I’m not saying plagiarism isn’t awful and it shouldn’t be avoided altogether. It absolutely must be avoided. It’s highly unethical to take someone else’s work and pass it off as your own. It’s nothing any of us should stand for -not as clients, writers, or even casual readers. That’s not the point here.
I want to ask you this. What does your focus on plagiarism say about you? If it’s your primary concern, does it make you appear trusting and genuinely worth working with? I don’t think so, and I think a lot of other freelance writers would agree with me. When we’re looking for clients, we want to establish positive relationships right off the bat. We want a certain level of trust, and more importantly, we want to know that our clients’ heads are in the right place.
If you are primarily concerned about plagiarism, it says you deal with a lot writers who steal other peoples’ work. You could be any of these three, and we wouldn’t know it.
1.) You might be some college student looking to get a paper written for you. That’s unethical.
2.) You need someone to create tons and tons of pointless SEO articles, and you only really care that they aren’t worded the same. So you’re basically looking for a monkey in front of a typewriter.
3.) The best case scenario. You’re a good client who lacks focus on what’s truly important when it comes to creating written content.
See where I’m going with this? If we know you have a solid business sense and direction, we’ll be more willing to work with you. Success attracts success. We want to hear about your plans to be unique in a crowded marketplace, to do something that hasn’t been done before. When you keep talking about Copyscape, we get a sense that you just want to be like everyone else.
So do us all a favor, and begin from a place of positivity. We aren’t children. We can at least be trusted not to steal someone else’s work. Hiring someone online is just like hiring them in the real world. You need to get to know that person. You have to develop a sense of trust.
I’m not saying you won’t get burned, but I think it’s better to take that risk than to automatically position yourself as a negative client. We have to take similar risks. It’s just the way the world works.
Start with trust, and you’ll always attract the highest quality freelance writers.
Ted, Great article! It happens with many of us.
I really hate those “Copyscape-addicted assholes”. Last week I got to work with a client on Elance who wanted me to re-write his article barely enough to pass Copyscape. When I checked, you won’t believe his “original” article was the sentence-by-sentence copy of three different articles published on Web. Now I got to know why he wanted me to re-write that piece of garbage.
When asked the purpose, he said he is launching a new Website next month and plan to post this article there. I advised him that he could have asked me to create an entirely new article, but won’t agree. This guy wasted two hours of my time and promised to give me more such “opportunities” if I was successful on this one.
I was so irritated that I instantly re-wrote that piece, submitted it and refunded the $50 deposited in the Escrow. Oh yes! I asked him not to offer me such opportunities again. My hours of time is more important than fifty bucks.
And it just lowers your self-esteem. I had to ask myself – Is it the right use of my talent?
Totally agree. Not to mention, nothing is more mentally agonizing than trying to slightly modify / rewrite some horrible piece of crap article. I just can’t do it. I have to start with a blank screen in order to come up with anything worthwhile.
It’s interesting because my best work seems to just flow out of me. If it takes too long to write, I can tell it’s going to suck.