Why Should You Care?
For every good prepper website on the internet there is probably 10 websites that are there just to take advantage of you and I. Picking the right prepper website and knowing which of these website owners put in the time and energy to add quality to the preparedness community is easy for me to understand, but for the average person just trying to learn something it is not that cut and dry.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do understand that you just want to learn something, you don’t care about what goes on behind the scenes and I completely get that. But without all of these good preparedness websites, all of this great information would not be available to you on a daily basis, and these bad or “spam” websites would have nothing to offer or nothing to steal to make you believe they are helping you out.
All I ask is that you take a few minutes to read this and hopefully you will gain a better understanding about how you can support your favorite websites and how you can spot these spam websites that only make this preparedness community look “scammy” for lack of a better word.
People like me who decided to start a preparedness website to teach and learn from each other, build awareness and spread the word about self-sufficiency are far different than the websites that are just looking to take advantage of you and I both.
Please watch this video I made about how easy it is to put together one of these websites, some of the differences to look for and what you can do for the preparedness community when you find an article that you find interesting on one of these sites.
The Good and Bad
There are some similarity’s and some differences in these preparedness websites, and sometimes it can be hard to find out who is trying to fool you, and who is truly trying to benefit the preparedness community.
Ads
You will see ads on just about every prepper website you read, you will find ads on just about every website you read for that matter, but the difference is the intention of the website owner.
The good: A quality preparedness website will have ads on them because it takes time and money to continually add value for the preparedness community. If you are going to buy something on Amazon for instance you can click on a link from one of these websites and help them without having to spend any extra money.
As website owners we get a very small percentage of this, usually around 5% of the total. This means if you are going to buy something anyway, you can support one of your favorite websites by using their links. When you click an Amazon ad it doesn’t even have to be for that product, you can use one of these links anytime you plan on purchasing from Amazon.
The Bad: The fake prepper websites don’t care if you like the article or not, they want you to click an ad and that’s all they care about. You will see little effort to build a quality website because it would cost them too much for the small percentage they earn on ads. But if they can put 20 of these fake websites together for free and make $10 a week on each of those, that’s $800 a month they just stole from you and I.
Quality Content
The good: As someone who writes all of my own articles I can tell you it take about 4 hours (for me) to research and write an article. Then I need to add that article to the website, find and sometimes pay for images to add to that article and make sure it is formatted correctly so everyone will enjoy reading it.
A quality website owner will add personality to their website which takes time and energy on an ongoing basis. I don’t know about you but I like to read websites where I feel like I know them, where I feel like they have the same interests and concerns as me.
The Bad: The way I see it, these fake websites don’t have time for you and I, and these websites don’t care about creating a community, they just want our clicks. Unfortunately this is part of life, there are always people looking for the “quick and easy” and there are people that are not willing to put in the work necessary to better themselves and their lives.
THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT PREPPERS AT ALL.
When Google begins to see the same article in several different places it looks at that article as spam. When that article is looked at as spam to Google it decreases the chances of that article showing up in the search results where it could be exactly what someone is looking for. That person might never find the information they need because Google thinks it’s spam.
This is why I call them “fake Preppers” because if you are constantly trying to benefit from someone else’s work, you are part of the problem…not the solution. This is exactly what is wrong with this country today, and is exactly why so many people are dependent on the government.
I am not going to “call out” any of these fake prepper websites, OK, I wasn’t going to until this website did exactly what I was talking about only hours after I wrote this post today. Have a look at this…
This person linking to this article is like going to a job interview and saying “I can’t work Monday through Friday, and I need weekends off to be with my family. Other than that I’m all yours.” WHAT!
Now I’m not going to link to them because I would be doing them a favor but if you would like to go over to prepare4doom.com and tell them how you feel, be my guest. They also have a Facebook page that I will link to here. head over and tell him how helpful and truly grateful you are for his addition to the preparedness community.
Update: If you would like to see a truly great example of how a professional links to someone else’s article, have a look at Gaye Levy’s article at Backdoor Survival. This is an article that adds value to the preparedness community while giving the necessary attribution.
OK, Back to the good stuff.
Here is a list of some of the better websites where you will find quality information. Even if the article is not for you, you will know it came from a true prepper because they really want to help, teach and spread the word about preparedness… not just take your money.
Here is a list in no certain order of some (not all) great preparedness and homesteading websites.
You can also find a great list at Survival Top 50 and Top Prepper Websites.
By doing your best to ignore the fake prepper websites and by not clicking on their ads gives them less reason to be around in the first place.
All we ask of you is to take a minute when you find one of our articles on one of these websites and let us know… we’ll do the rest.
Lets see if this article makes it to any of those fake prepper websites 🙂
Thanks!
I love the video and how you show how easy it is to do this. Great job!!!
Thanks Todd,
I must admit, it was fun to vent a little bit :)But it still makes me angry when someone benefits from our work…on the internet or off the internet.
Lol Dale! The classic line in the video “I just need to put the source in….ah..that way… ah.. people don’t think I just stole this.” Love it. Thanks for shedding some light on this issue. 🙂
Thanks Julie, I hope everyone caught my sarcasm. I don’t think I’ve ever ripped myself off before. haha
You’re fake ad was great! Too funny, but so true! I didn’t realize it was this easy to do, I’m off now to make some fake prepper websites 😉 j/k
Love the video, Dale. You brought up a lot of great points. Before I started a blog I had no idea content was constantly being stolen. We need to get the word out because I know most people would not appreciate these thieves and what they are doing.
Nice job. I was looking tonight at some of my pingbacks and wondering what was going on and came across this.
I saw the same pingback for
https://survivalistprepper.net/will-friend-become-enemy/
as I did on
http://prepare4doom.com/will-your-friend-become-your-enemy/
and
http://www.prepperology.com/2014/04/will-your-friend-become-your-enemy/
I always embed links to my site in every article I write so I get a pingback and so I get cross-traffic.
I have people stealing my articles every week. Most of them feign ignorance stating that they thought it was ok as long as they give credit to the author, which is absolutely against copyright law, especially when the original site explicitly states that they’re not allowed to do that.
If the sites have much lower pagerank and authority than mine and leave in my links in the article, I usually just let them be. Google will figure it out and not rank them higher than me. If they have a pretty high pagerank (as I do come across sometimes but they’re rare) or they strip out my links, then I send them a polite email and leave a comment on the article. If they don’t respond in a few days, I send them an invoice through paypal for $752.45 per month or whatever I feel like charging for usage.
I’ve had several ignore my email and comment but so far no one has ignored the invoice. If they ever do, I’ll be filing a DMCA complaint with their hosting company to have their site shut down.
Great creativity with this project. It must have taken quite a while.
Thanks for the advice, I think I might send them an invoice before I file DMCA.
Graywolf
I’ll need more intel on your current COA to deal with these frauds. Hit me up sometime Airborne.
The same stuff happens to our articles which pisses most of us royally off but this is the age we live in. Zero ethical standards. We’ve been tempted to make the whole site members only but our readers are a wary bunch so that was decided against. The ping backs / track backs are perfect for spotting them. However it actually doesn’t help their SEO/rankings because Google’s latest algorithm will demote sites with duplicate content because Google knows who originally published the content. Still it’s pretty irritating.
Dale,
Great article and video! This highlights an ongoing theme on the internet, not only with preparedness related sites but everything really. Thanks for what you do and keep up the great work.
-Tom
At the end of the day, at least we know that someone will be able to start up a few web sites when the grid comes back up! (forward thinking, I’ve prepped so long that I already have plans to re-invent the wheel!)..
-Blue
There is so much of this “thievery” going on. I had subscribed to one of those websites after finding info that looked interesting. Her newsletters were in a style similar to Prepper Website, giving links to articles, but the links would go to her website, where you’d have to click another link to get to the REAL article. Yet under each link in her newsletter, it would say “first posted on (her website)”, as if she had written it. She has since added a small link next to each, that will take you directly to the original article, but you have to look for it. The only reason I still let her email me “her” newsletters is because sometimes I find new websites (that she stole from).
Thanks for the post. I totally concur with the frustration of others (and yourself). Ive spent almost 2 years, countless hours composing hundreds of articles and there are sites out there who simply rip off my content. At the end of the day I guess I’ll continue to do what I can and realize those other ad laden fake sites won’t last long when exposed…
PJ
Prepper-Resources.com
I’m not sure If you know about these or not, but the company I work for uses beacons to track the usages of an article to try to prevent copyright infringements. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/Web_beacon.html
What a great article & vid. Had to laugh, I only found you through a fb page that rarely writes anything themselves. Looking forward to reading more from you.
My site is newer and I’ve already experienced this from several sites. I’ve politely written them to either take down the article entirely or post a portion with a link back to my site. Some have done so, some just ignore the request. I really like Graywolf’s idea of invoicing them via Paypal, that is awesome. My question is, will the hosting company actually take them down if they are reported?
Also, in the comments, skeptical mentions sites that link to others. I don’t really see an issue with this if people aren’t stealing the material, it drives traffic to the original sites. After all, this is in effect what Prepperwebsites does and a few of the sites listed have very little or no original content themselves. I have both a website and a YouTube channel, videos take many times longer to produce than articles. I can’t come out with a video everyday nor can I write articles when working on a video. In today’s world, if you aren’t posting everyday your audience forgets about you. I use other good articles like this one to keep my name in readers/viewers minds.
This article was a big influence on me becoming a member…honest/straight forward info.
I really appreciate your article. Since I am new to prepping it is hard to know which side are legitimate and knowledgeable and which ones are fake.
Thank you so much for this article. I get so frustrated when I spend my time creating a quality, information filled article just to have it snatched as soon as I post it.
Todd from Prepper Website directed me here through his article on the same topic (here: http://www.edthatmatters.com/a-note-of-courtesy-for-prep-bloggers-and-preppers-who-read-them/ ). I’m so glad you wrote about this to your community. I wish mine was big enough so that if I did discuss it now, it would make a difference, but it’s not, so I’ll hold off and talk about it when my community is larger.
I’ve gotten so many pingbacks and found so many scrapers who steal my whole rss feed even that It’s practically become second nature for me to find them. I report them to Google if for some reason they end up outranking me in the SERPS. Otherwise, I feel like, for now, I have to live with them.
I also get a lot of individuals who start amazon sites (mostly knife “review” sites) stealing my original images, and it gets pretty frustrating. I can only hope that eventually this kind of thing goes away, but I can tell that for at least the next few years, this kind of spamming is here to stay, and these people will still get views regardless of whether or not their content is stolen.
Anyway thanks for this post and trying to make your community more aware. As a prepper/survival webmaster and content creator I can vouch that every word you wrote is true.
Great notation about the whole Amazon thing: If you like a prepper Web site, please support them with a purchase you’d make on Amazon anyway. There are so many great preps on Amazon. This is a good way to support prepper Web sites.