Duplicate Content vs Syndication

I have an issue with Wealthy Affiliate.

Nothing really serious and in no way am I bad-mouthing this awesome community. But I recently went through an experience with the administrators that I want to share with everyone to keep them from making the same mistake I did. I also want to open this topic up for discussion and debate so any comments you have on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

I had a blog post removed this morning. I subsequently received a personal message from Kyle stating that the reason he removed the post was because WA does not allow for duplicate content and that in the future I should refrain from this practice.

For those who don't know, duplicate content is a nice way of defining plagiarism. In essence, you have taken someone else's work and posted it as your own with the purpose of manipulating the search engines to get more traffic. Google takes this very seriously and if Google catches you doing this, they can, and often do, de-index your site.So it is obvious why the post was taken down by the administrators.

What's not obvious is the reason I posted the article. So let me be clear - I do not plagiarize articles. Everything I have ever written has been from my own 'hand' as a result of the hours, day, weeks, and months, of improving my writing skill. Proficiency in writing is an essential skill for Internet marketers because it is the primary means to convey your message. Without original, engaging content, your chances of running a successful blog are next to none.

The article in question was actually a re-post of an article I'd written previously on another site. As stated in previous posts, I am a paid member of several Internet marketing communities and have purchased thousands of dollars in courses. What I did was take my original article for one audience and presented it here for an entirely different audience because I felt that this community could benefit from the post as well.

They have a term for this and it's called syndication. As the author of said post, I should have the right to distribute that article across as many platforms as I choose. Press releases are a great example of this. There are exact word-for-word press releases that get distributed across thousands of sites daily. Companies pay big money to have their articles syndicated in order to reach larger audiences. Google does not penalize sites for this and the practice is actually encouraged in other internet marketing courses.

Regardless of how I feel, the rules are the rules so I must oblige. So I apologize to the WA community for posting duplicate content according to Kyle's interpretation. I just wanted to explain my reasoning and rationale and I promise that this will not happen again.