Another Perspective on “Stealing Ideas”

Interesting that Alex Mandossian talked about stealing ideas on Monday night’s Teleseminar Secrets QA. Guess it was on both our minds yesterday! (Or maybe they read my blog post and asked the question as a result. My hubris-ha!)

Let me say, too, in this digital age, it really is a lot easier to steal content. You can sell your ebook, you can try to lock it up with passwords, but unscrupulous people can still pass it around, even put their name on it, and there’s not a lot you can do to prevent it, ultimately. (Although, one of the reasons I like audio products is, if it’s your voice teaching the material, it’s harder to rip off. Even if someone transcribes your lessons and sells it as their own, you would have a case if it’s your voice that gave the content originally.)

Anyway, Alex gave an answer that can, if you grasp it, transform how you think about your own content and what you do with it.

His answer is simply, “I make sure that I make money, even if people steal my content.”

How can you do this? Well, let’s say you have an ebook. You give great content in it, you are charging for it, and someone steals it and passes it around for free. How can you make money from that?

One way is to include live links to other things that you sell, or even free information that allows you to develop a relationship with others.

Another way is to recommend other people’s resources that you promote as an affiliate. If the resources are valuable, then the reader of your stolen content will still order–through your link.

Yet another way is to invite people, in your ebook, to get more involved with you (through coaching, or by taking a course, or whatever you can offer them to help them even more). That makes it even more difficult for someone to take your content, as they’d have to actually edit out the part that relates to your services. This may end up being more work for someone than it’s worth to them.

Do what you can to make your content “steal-proof,” but then, also do what you can to make money even if someone does rip you off. Either way, you win.