Work for Hire article on two sites/

Author requests permission to post at his site

[shallow]

I hired and paid someone for an article that will be permanently posted at my site. He understands that I own the copyright. He's asked permission to also post it at his site.

At first blush, I don't mind. Should I?

One concern is indexing the article by search engines. Obviously I paid for it in the hopes it will attract people to my site.

I'd appreciate any words of wisdom?

[Dachary]

I'm a writer for hire, and the way I have solved this problem with articles I've sold is by posting a link to the work on my website. It's another link to the site, which helps with SEO, and I still get to point it out to potential clients as my work.

[D_Blackwell]

I would mind. I buy the work. I own the work. I don't want it showing up anywhere else. Send him on his way. Use him again if the work is good. Use him a lot if the results are good.

I wouldn't give the link either. His work wasn't free, why should the link be free? There are rare exceptions, but generally - no way.

He can still point it out as his work. If he's good and I'm happy, then I'll gladly vouch with a personal recommendation. That ought be worth a lot more than the link.

[Write_2_Plz]

Incoming links can actually be beneficial to your website and can boost your search rankings, especially if this professional can provide you with a nice anchor link using a relevant keyword - even more so if their site is similar in topic to yours and favors well with the search engines.

I am a freelance writer as well and feel it is a bit unethical to ask for publishing rights to something after copyrights are sold.

You could ask him to rewrite the article so that it shows as a unique article in the engines, then it could be published on his site or you could post it on an article directory like ezinearticles and he could publish it as well as others without affecting indexing of the original.

[D_Blackwell]

You could ask him to rewrite the article

No shortage of authors that 'repackage' what they were paid to create, and then sell it off again; without any 'fair use' issues at all if they are good at editing, rewriting, repackaging..... "Repeat process until cash cow is milked dry:))"

[Write_2_Plz]

I agree D_Blackwell that it is totally not cool to simply rewrite and resell!

That's not what I'm suggesting!

It sounds to me that shallow seems to be happy with this writer and probably doesn't mind sharing the article - they just want to be sure they're not hurting themselves!

In this case, rewriting the article for the writer's use would satisfy that. Rewriting the article for a directory, meaning the authors use and the rest of the online world, would benefit the original owner emmensely and still give the writer fair use.

I have a similar relationship with a client and it has boosted his rankings tremendously (in my case, I am not acknowledging the pieces as my own work - the client still has ownership as well as links pointing to their site) This sort of thing wouldn't work for an author wanting to build a portfolio.

[jacstar]

I personally don't mind having my article on the original writer's site, if I haven't asked for it in a ghostwriting manner. If I want to use the work as mine, then I will obviously be credited as the author. If I'm simply using it as a method to increase traffic, then the more (quality) links the better.

I write myself at times, though it's more infrequent due to my business needs. I know how tight some buyers can be, and how undervalued writers are by the type of buyers who think they own the world, so I'm happy for the writer to get some extra credit, especially if the work is excellent.

Jacs.

[anallawalla]

I think it should be OK to let the writer post a copy if and only if the page is tagged noindex, nofollow, noarchive, internal links to it are nofollowed, and for good measure blocked in robots.txt. :) The main concern is duplicate content, which is more likely to affect the writer, but you never know.