On a Side Note:
I'm not sure why I called this "On a Side Note" because I don't know what it would be on the side of, but here it is nonetheless:
All the information that I put out there is for you guys to eat up and digest in order to take your images and your photography business to another level. I want you to devour my PH2PRO site and all it's content as well as my DVD and anything else I put out there publicly. Use whatever ideas you like for your own marketing purposes, but please do it in your own words. You can take my ideas and paraphrase the crap out of them, but don't lift copy from my site and use it verbatim.
It doesn't thrill me to see that happening and Google doesn't like it either and will push sites down in the search engines because of it. Content on my site is copywritten, so taking it and posting it like you wrote it is totally not cool. The most commonly copied information over the years comes from my rates page on www.peterhurley.com. I've found portions of it copied and pasted word for word on a number of other photographer's websites.
For those that have lifted copy from me, you know who you are and you are not alone. I find it even more interesting when photographers who have done this ask me to check out their site. Baffles me really and I've gotten somewhat used to it over the years. Guess I felt it was time to throw this up in a post and ask those infringing buffoons to remove my content from their site rather than pointing them out publicly one by one.
When I get a good idea from someone else I credit that person where credit is due. I want you guys to know where it comes from and how I came across the information. Integrity in this business and life goes a long way and I'm a straight shooter with you guys and my clients, that's just the way I roll. I know the majority of you are the same and have no need to be reading this, but I also know there are those out there that certainly need to read it.
So come on guys! Get it together and come up with some unique ways to market your own business and create work that has your stamp on it. I've put myself out there for this, so I guess it's to be expected. What's the phrase? Imitation is the highest form of flattery, I guess I can live with that.
9 Comments
I hope after your note for sure they will give you credit or remove your content from their websites, totally agree, "that's not cool". But that also means you are famous for your excellent work, you are doing the correct thing and your strategies work so people want to copying you!!.... =)
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then copy/paste should definitely go down as the highest form of buffoonery.
That said, I'm certainly one who has paraphrased the HELL out of the instructions on your rates page, mainly because I love the layout of it. I found just the headings alone suggest you're someone whose got his shit together and it's not just "come on over, stare at my camera for an hour, and let's have some fun". Spent damn near 6 hours doing it in my own words though, which would have taken me easily months or even years to come up with myself otherwise and put all that stuff together. So thanks a ton for doing that.
I sent that out via email. No way in hell I'd put that on my site. And mainly, I did it after forwarding a bunch of folks over to your site since frankly you're the only reason I even thought to do headshots in the first place, so I was forwarding them there to check out your style and what we were trying to aim for in the shoot. I also wanted a better way of knowing that they read it, so I stuck it in my words in email form. That way if they responded to the email, I knew they at least glanced at it.
But hey, people are gonna copy/paste, it's inevitable. But the thing they'll never get is your look, your style, your vision, your expertise, and your thought process. And that to me is why people book you. And that's exactly why I joined here looking to learn from you. And that's *also* why after people go to these other psuedo-shabangers for their half-assed headshots and see the results, they'll be even more educated as customers when they're then coming your way because the first guy screwed them over and had them looking all blank and they couldnt book any jobs. Just my $0.02, I could be wrong.
it is bad to copy the work of others, i hate that. There is nothing unique on copy things, so i think it is good that you tell us the same. To tell you the truth, i try to copy your style of images on my own way, and it is hard to do this with a unique style, but this is the learning process, and when i am not longer a noob i can find my own words for my webpage. Till there you will only find images :)
Uncool and totally unprofessional.
I just hope that these incidents won't cause you to think twice about sharing with us.
During the learning process it's natural to copy (style, ideas, setup etc), but you can never call it "your own" until you incorporate it in your own style of work.
otherwise your just a copycat, and that's never as good as the original.
keep up the good work Peter, and don't let those guys bring you down
I don't even see how this could work for them, most things on your site are pretty tailored to your unique studio and business conditions, unless they copied all of that as well.
Never saw the plagiarism checker before. Thanks Erika Barker! If you guys really want to see results copy and paste this into it: http://peterhurley.com/rates/rates.php
Found one for a guy in Atlanta, what a joke.
Yikes. I think I recognized a few PH2PRO photographers when I googled a bit of text from the rates page.
Not to sound "high and mighty", but it raises a question about integrity. What else have they 'borrowed'?
Reminds me of a recent blog post about a photographer who passed other's work as her own. She was eventually caught and her career took a nosedive. If anyone's interested: http://www.potsc.com/potsc/how-i-ruined-my-career/
Yeah, I have read that Brian. I do have some PH2 Photographers showing up in the results, so I'm just hoping it's a bit of an eye opener and they revise the copy on their sites a bit.
Log in or Create an account to post comments.