Readers Behaving Badly – The Leech

17. Sep, 2007 Comments - Leave your comment

Readers Behaving Badly - An Angel Surrounded by Demons

A leech is a person who clings to another for personal gain without giving anything in return. A leech comes with the implication or effect of exhausting the other’s resources. A leech is a parasite. (From dictionary.com)

We all know (or should know) what a leech is like in real life. They’re the friends that always expect you to give them rides or pay for their meal. They’re the roommates who haven’t paid rent for months, yet still eat your food and jack up your utility bill. But what does a leech look like when one moves into the online world?

Hmmm, Nice Photograph!

These readers steal the stock photography on your site. You know, the ones you paid at least a dollar a piece for on iStockPhoto?

Or better yet, these readers will cruise your Flickr account and steal some of your more personal work and place it on their site with no credit whatsoever.

Can I Use Your Bandwidth?

On top of some readers stealing the images on your site, some readers don’t have the courtesy of actually saving the image and uploading it to their own site. These readers are fully content to link directly to your image and piggyback on your bandwidth. Fortunately there are ways to combat image hotlinking.

Better yet, how about linking directly to a PDF, ZIP file, or some other document rather than hosting it? Why use up one’s own bandwidth when one can use up yours?

Nice Idea. I Think I’ll Take It.

You’ve come up with a grand idea. And you have just discovered that one of your readers has taken it and claimed it as their own. I can see your skin begin to crawl and your face starting to turn red.

What can one do when you discover someone has stolen (err, borrowed permanently) an idea of yours? Do you call the reader out? Or do you just bite your lip and try to forget it?

I Don’t Care How Busy You Are. I Need Help Now!

I wrote on my personal site a while back about Sprint removing problem customers. These customers are a problem for the company because they take up too many resources as far as support goes.

Some readers can be compared to problem customers and sooner or later, it might be wise to just tell them to shove off.

I asked back in June if it is ever okay to lose a reader. While my opinion is still the same that one should try to keep all readers, some readers are simply too much of a burden. They might require too much “custom” support, might rip on every one of your points, might ceaselessly e-mail you, or some other activities that demand a great deal of your time. As far as return on investment goes, sometimes you just need to cut someone off.

As a plugin author, I’ve had a few people demand instant attention and threaten to give my plugin a negative rating on WordPress Extend if I didn’t help them. Threatening a plugin author who provides something for free is not a good way to win a friend.

Conclusion

Just like vampires can suck a victim dry, some readers demand all the attention, but give nothing back. They can leech on your bandwidth, your ideas, and your time. If you have any more examples of “leechy” behavior, please share them in the comments.