You put a lot of sweat, hard work, tears (don’t be shy to admit it), and coffee into your blog - wouldn’t you hate it if someone just stole all of your content and put it onto their blog without your permission nor a link back to you (if you do like that kind of stuff happening to you, feel free to leave a link to your blog in the comments!)

Sadly, this act of e-burglary occurs daily in the form of splogs (spam blogs) and other such unsuccessful blog dystopia’s. Splogs don’t often have readers (seeing as how a typical post would look somewhat like this:

“Blog Badly has made a great post on splogs, kittens, keywords, and random things that don’t relate at all to the actual post but since I’m a splog I don’t care about my description. Here’s an excerpt:

‘…typical post would look somewhat like… blogging badly… data entry…”

READ MORE HERE“

If you’re looking at this and thinking, “Hey, this looks kind of like my blog!” then congratulations, you don’t need to read this blog any more. You’ve pretty much reached the epitome of blogging badly.

BUT MAX, I’M NOT GOOD AT WRITING MY OWN CONTENT!
A career in data entry may be right for you!

GREAT THINGS (DON’T) HAPPEN WHEN YOU STEAL CONTENT
When you take things that aren’t yours (see: steal) in real life, what happens? Even those unfamiliar to their countries legal system generally know of a place called jail (where you will go) and a thing called money (which you will have to pay).

Stealing things in the blogging world isn’t much different. Whether it be images or content, it’s not a good idea to take it without permission because:

1. The owner of the blog/website you’re taking it from will find out
2. You’ll lose all of your credibility
3. Your readers will hate you

IN SHORT…
Coming up with your own content is your best bet. Quoting a paragraph or two with proper crediting is generally acceptable and most people don’t mind you taking an image (if you link back to them). If someone asks you to take something of theirs down, do it.