Licensing or Exchanging Content
November 29, 1999
Many sites allow other sites to "republish" or "repurpose"
their content. This is not the same as establishing a link
to the content. Here, we're talking about a site taking your
content and coding it into their own pages. When a site
simply links to your content, you can't lose. When they
republish your content, the content adds to the value of
their site, and only a small percentage of their visitors
will click on the included link to your site. Nevertheless,
allowing others to use your content can be a good traffic
builder. Some writers send out articles to lots of sites,
offering the content free to any site that wants it, as long
as they include a link to the writer's site. Sometimes
exchanging content between related sites can be a good deal.
Your attitude toward exchanging content will differ depending
on whether your site is a "content" site
(advertising-supported) an e-commerce site (supported
by online sales) or a general business site. For sites that
sell advertising, maximizing the number of page impressions
is the name of the game, so they tend to be less enthusiastic
about allowing other sites to reproduce their content.
For other types of sites, content such as articles exists
only to attract visitors, who are encouraged to click on over
to the pages where business takes place. In that case, the
more places your content is reproduced, the better, as
long as it appears with a hot link to your site. Remember,
if the content has no link to your site, it does you no good
at all, so any time you let another site use your content,
check to be sure that there's a prominent (and properly
working) link to your site.
Always be very clear about whether, and under what
circumstances, your content may be repurposed. Of course, if
you don't explicitly agree that it may be repurposed, then
any such use would be copyright infringement. If you do
allow others to use your content, make it very clear that you
expect a prominent link back to your site. Naturally, this
sort of thing is hard to enforce. As the editor of a
commercial content site, I'm often approached by people
wanting to republish our stuff. I politely tell them that
they are welcome to reuse it, as long as they're willing to
pay, but I suspect that a few unscrupulous characters
just go ahead and do it anyway, without paying. Sigh.
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