Protecting My Original Poetry

[amythepoet]

Here is the scoop, I have just made a second site in which I sell poetry, lots of poems, printed on pretty paper. Now, in order to handle the theft situation, I only have put the first stanza and a half on, for each of the 57 poems. Then, I have the stationery displayed on the bottom of each poem, so the customer can choose. But , so far, no sales :(

I was thinking, to heck with it, and put the entire poem on, I know there will be some theft, but I think the customers really like to see what they are buying before they buy it.

Any suggestions? Thanks a million

-a-

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 8:16 pm (utc) on Dec. 23, 2003]
[edit reason] Split from previous thread [/edit]

[Hawkgirl]

(Realizing that this could muck with your searchable content, I'll suggest it anyway.)

You could display the poems in their completeness in graphic form. Then if someone wants to copy them they'd have to do a lot of work, type them in or write them out by hand. It saves you the quick copy-and-paste theft.

You could leave the half-poems in text for search engine purposes ... thereby keeping some content alive on the site but keeping the quick rip-off artists at bay.

Just a thought.

[amythepoet]

Thanks very much Hawkgirl, what you say makes sense.

Now, I have another question to ask you about searchable content.

First of all, I need to know how to submit the new oscommerce site to the search engines? Do I do it as a regular html one? I mean, do I need the meta tags, and descriptions?

Thanks

-a-

[Hawkgirl]

> Thanks very much Hawkgirl, what you say makes sense.

;) Glad I could help.

As for the other stuff, that's probably a question better answered in another forum ... don't want the content about content to get off-topic!

[rogerd]

I like the idea of making the poems images, too... At least you will force rip-off artists to type them in.

One thing you could do is use CSS to replace the image with text for text-only browsers. It's unlikely that the casual poem-pirate would figure out what you were doing, but that would let the poem content get spidered while most users see images.

The big problem, Amy, is that a poem is just a short block of text (now THAT's romantic... :)) - hard to protect, easy to steal. I'd guess for every one you sell you'll get many more swiped. It would be easy to copy the poem and put it on a background, or paste it into a greeting card template, etc. I don't think there are any easy answers for your ready-to-buy poems. Price 'em cheap, & work on making potential thieves feel guilty?

To keep people from stealing your poetry and putting it on their own site, I'd recommend searching for some unique phrases every now and then.

[amythepoet]

Gret advice, I have priced them low $9.95 and what they're going to get is worth a lot more, my husband has gotten into the act and he's a great poet! No f ooling

So, I'll talk to my web people about your plan and see what we can do.

thanks again and happy holidays!

-Amy

[rogerd]

Amy, one other thought. To the extent that you are charging for "short blocks of text", you are very vulnerable to content theft. People probably don't want to buy a poem without seeing it, and if they see it they can steal it.

So, why don't you try adding more value? You already do that with the decorative stationery... Consider stepping up one more level by offering several formatting and framing options, at considerably higher prices, of course. Perhaps some people might like a leather presentation folder (like those for diplomas, etc.) while others might like a matted & framed poem. I suspect you can get some standard-sized products fairly inexpensively, and adjust your printed content to fit nicely.

By making the poem part of a total gift package, you'll make copy theft less of an issue. In addition, you'll solve a problem for your customers - how to present someone with their poem. (Best of all, you'll raise your average order size!)

[jimbeetle]

Amy, for more ideas along rogerd's line of thought head over to eBay and search for 'poem.'

You'll have to wade through some extraneous stuff, but as poems pop up in many different eBay categories that's about the best way to see the gamut that's offered.

There's a lot of different ways folks are adding value to their poems, a few really inventive. Think you can get some good ideas.

[amythepoet]

Ok, great advice, thank you, I'll look on ebay

amy