After 25 years of working for major real estate brokerages, I decided to get my Broker’s designation and open my own company for a niche real estate market. This real estate company is unique because we don’t work with buyers and sellers directly, we park real estate licenses. We opened as a virtual office for Ontario real estate agent’s who are transitioning in or out of active sales but want to hold onto their real estate license. Real estate agents, who are considering retirement, have health issues, new babies or young children, new agents who weren’t quite ready to jump into commission sales and agents who just need to take a break from the industry. We would be non-board members of RECO and could offer a low cost alternative to organized membership. To best serve the consumer, clients, family and friends would then be referred to full service board members and our real estate agents would qualify to earn referral income.
As a virtual office, one of our main advertising tools would be to market ourselves via the internet. When the idea first took hold, I played with different domain names. I already owned
www.carolstinson.com, but thought I needed a domain name that would be more appropriate to what the brokerage was all about. I purchased www.parkrealestatelicense.com and then as the idea progressed decided that
www.OptionsForAgents.com would be a nice fit and different to what others were using. I had designed and optimized websites as a salesperson and was getting several hits from buyers and sellers which translated into sales. So I set out to do the same for my new business of parking Ontario real estate licenses.
I diligently worked on the site to come up with a unique approach and watched as the site rose in the search engines and started to get hits and contacts very quickly. Then yesterday, I checked to see my standing in google only to find my titles and wording were now being used by my competition. When I opened the page, I saw everything I had written being used almost word for word. There was no mention of their brokerage name, only a “click here” to lead back to the competition’s website. Not only does this go against RECO’s advertising rules, but borders on outright plagiarism. Then, brefore I posted this blog, excerps from my site with direct wording appeared on Kijiji. I don’t know whether to be flattered or infuriated. At the very least, it certainly shows a lack of imagination. But on the up side, I’m being seen as a threat which means I am being noticed and obviously on the right road to being found by those who can use my service. I believe in fair competition and have even checked out my competitor’s websites. When you’re watching me, I am watching back. My final thought is Ontario Canada is a big province and there’s lots of business to go around.
Carol A Stinson is Broker of Record for Carol A Stinson, Brokerage where you can park your Ontario real estate license. You can hang your license and hold it active to earn referral commission and pursue other interests. Find out more at
www.OptionsForAgents.com.
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There are currently 6 Responses to this blog entry.
Robert Worthington
I would be very upset by this as well. Write them a letter stating your intentions that the content must be removed or you will persue them. Also, it is good to know you are doing your job correctly! Best of luck to you. Also, you may want to ask Eric Blackwell what to do, you can find him in the forums and such.
Robert Worthington
Carol, I also should add that you can download a program called copyscape. You should get that program for your website. Also they don't fully have your meta tags and meta description.
carolstinson
Thanks for your comments Robert. I have looked at copyscape as a warning but don't how great a deterrent that will be. This particular person has done the same for several other websites.
thataway61
Look in the forums for "stolen content", "copied my site", etc. I know there are a couple of threads in here that will tell you exactly what to do.
Most, when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar blame it on someone else and get rid of the content pretty quickly.
sharon lewis
I would continuously leave notes on their blog, letting them know you originated the piece, so any potential buyer reading it, loses their trust in that agent....talk to a lawyer....but when you write something, you own it....
info@rodfriesen.com
Here is a new one, I had an agent from San Diego call, email etc... every managing broker in my office stating that I, someone who has had over 8 years in internet marketing experience, copied content from them.
At first it was laughable, then I started digging and sure enough our content was very similar, just in different market places. So I ran a few searches on G, Y and B to see if there were more, and sure enough, there were a LOT of matching content sites.
I phoned my content writer, who assured me they had not copied data from anywhere but that they had used resources to help with their writing. I was satisfied, but this other fellow continued... What is someone supposed to do? Copyright every piece of content on my site? I feel that I will just leave it... there is so much info online that some is bound to be the same, but when you are directly ripped off, page after page, you have to step in...