It’s clear that as a blogger, content writer, instructor, or student, you know plagiarism is unacceptable. Google frowns upon it as well and may blacklist your website if they find duplicate text. That means fewer rankings, less traffic, and fewer sales and nobody wants that.

Luckily, Copyscape comes in to help you check your content against billions of similar pages on the internet. If there are any matching sources, the app will show you the matching text and the source it matches online.

The plagiarism tool offers a free service that allows you to paste a URL and check for any duplicate content online. A Copyscape Premium lets you paste text or upload a batch of files and check for plagiarism. Furthermore, you can create a private index to let you check new content against what’s in the private database.

The other product is Copysentry which protects your website against content theft. The tool monitors the internet for your content’s copies and emails you whenever new copies appear. I like Copyscape because it’s fast, easy to use, clean (no ads), supports the most popular languages and alphabets, and checks content against almost the entire internet.

However, there’s no way to verify whether the app has thoroughly checked all the revealed sources. Moreover, it can’t save plagiarism reports, doesn’t support cloud platforms like Google Drive, and its customer support is slow.

These shortcomings may prompt you to look for Copyscape alternatives. Keep reading to discover the best tool for your needs.

Best Copyscape Alternatives To Try

1. ProWritingAid

You might know ProWritingAid as one of the best grammar and proofreading checkers. But it also features a plagiarism checker that checks your content against over a billion web pages to ascertain its originality. While it doesn’t come with a free version, it’s an affordable Copyscape alternative.

This tool bills you based on the number of checks rather than the number of words. You can check high-volume texts like novels and eBooks without paying much.

You pay $10 for 10 checks, $40 for 100 checks, $120 for 500, and $200 for 1000 checks. As a premium user, you can generate plagiarism reports and access other tools, such as grammar checker, thesaurus, and readability reports.

2. Grammarly

Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker compares your content against more than 16 billion web pages plus academic papers within Proquest’s databases. When a section of your text matches the content on web pages or in a database, you’ll receive a plagiarism alert.

The free version displays the number of grammar issues in the content and whether it’s plagiarized or not. But it doesn’t show you where the issues are. The plagiarism checker in Grammarly Premium highlights the plagiarized sentences and displays the plagiarism percentage.

Besides, you can see the sources of matching content on the right panel in the form of web URLs. You can click those links to dig deeper and confirm the details. The highlighted sections will disappear as you rewrite the plagiarized content in the Grammarly interface.

In addition to checking for plagiarism, Grammarly is a grammar, spelling, and punctuation checker. So, while rewriting any unoriginal content, the tool also shows grammar errors in your content with suggestions on what to do. This is one of the features you won’t find on Copyscape.

You can use the free version to check for plagiarism, but it only says whether the text has plagiarism or not. It also displays the number of writing issues in it. To see the specific unoriginal text and other grammar errors, you may need to upgrade to the Premium Plan, which starts at $12 a month, or Business Plan, which starts at $12.50 monthly.

3. Copyleaks

Teachers, SEO writers, businesses, bloggers, students, and anyone else uses Copyleaks to check for duplicate content and plagiarism.

Copyleaks uses AI and machine learning technology to analyze manipulated text and spot identical, similar, and paraphrased content sections. This tool finds what other plagiarism-checking tools let slip through the cracks.

What I find impressive about Copyleaks is the ability to generate accurate and comprehensive results as PDF reports. This is a feature you’d be hard-pressed to find on Copyscape. The CheatSpot.AI feature allows teachers to receive alerts when there’s suspected cheating. This feature uses White Ink and Character Development methods that most plagiarism checkers lack.

Bloggers can use Copyleaks to compare individual webpages on two different websites to detect possible copyright infringement. But that’s not all. Online course instructors can integrate Copyleaks with their favorite learning management system (LMS) in less than 30 minutes to help check for plagiarism and duplicate text within the LMS.

Copyleaks offers a free limited trial that lets you check 20 pages monthly. The premium version targets two types of users. The Academia and Education version costs 10.99/month to check 100 pages or 25,000 words. On the other hand, the Business and Enterprise version goes for $9.99/month for checking 100 pages or 25,000 words.

4. Plagtracker

PLAGTRACKER provides an online plagiarism checker tool that would thoroughly scan your document and give a report by highlighting a number of the plagiarized text. Once you upload the content on the website or paste it into the text box, the tool compares it against all academic articles on the internet together with their database, which contains over 20 million documents.

This tool is best for students and teachers who handle academic content online. Plagiarism can get a student penalized for copying another person’s work. That’s why this tool will check all your essays thoroughly, making sure your work is entirely original.

PLAGTRACKER is free software. Besides checking for plagiarism, you get other features to proofread your text and fix grammar errors. When dealing with large documents, you will have to upgrade to a premium account since it provides you with the capacity to scan larger files more quickly.

PLAGTRACKER’s premium account isn’t pricey and has more features than Copyscape. The app’s excellent features include an instant report (online version), PDF report (offline version), grammar check, compatibility with multiple file formats, reference processing, unlimited checking volume, and more.

The billing is on a subscription model at $14.99 per month, but there’s a 50% discount for the first month, which means you pay $7.49.

5. SmallSEOTools

The Plagiarism Checker by SmallSEOTools works by matching your content against billions of other pages on the web. It processes the results within seconds and generates a report. What gives the software an edge over Copyscape is the built-in rewriting feature. If your content contains unoriginal text, you simply need to click on the rewrite button, which will automatically rewrite the text, making it unique.

Plagiarism Checker also supports several document formats, including .docx, .pdf, .doc, .txt, .odt, .rtf, and more. Provided your document is in digital format, you can upload it and let the software do the rest. Want to check an entire web page? Well, this free tool gives you a feature that would allow you to paste a URL and check whether any of its content is copied elsewhere.

Did you run a plagiarism check and want a report to send to relevant parties as proof that they stole your content? No worries, as the tool generates a report that you can download and share with others. The sharing option is right there in the app.

Moreover, this excellent tool allows you to check for plagiarism in languages other than English. Hence whether your content has been written in Chinese, Italian, or French, the tool processes it trouble-free.

Interestingly, they have a WordPress plugin that lets you check for plagiarism within a post or page in WordPress without copy-pasting your entire post. Plagiarism Checker from SmallSEOTools has a Free Plan and four premium monthly plans. The Free Plan lets you run unlimited words for up to 20 queries.

The Basic Plan costs $4.99 per month for up to 500 queries. You can run 1000 queries for $9.99 in the Standard Plan, 3000 queries for $19.99 per month in the Business Plan, and 10000 queries for $49.99 per month in the Professional Plan. If you prefer an annual plan, you can buy it at $99.99, $199.99, and $399.99 for the Basic, Standard, and Business Plans.

6. CopyGator

CopyGator is an online tool that will help you detect any content copied from your posts. The application achieves this by monitoring your RSS feed and comparing them to data generated from other feeds.

The software will automatically update you if any of your feeds match other blogger feeds by sending a “collusion.” Depending on the similarity level, this feature will describe how much of your content has been copied, such that some are labeled “near” and others “exact.”

In addition, the online tool will provide you with more information concerning when, where, and how your content has been plagiarized. Guess what? All these services are provided to you for free. CopyGator works like Copyscape’s Copysentry, but it’s free.

7. Plagiarisma

Plagiarisma is a perfect plagiarism-checking tool for students and teachers. It scans essays, research papers, dissertations, and coursework and compares them to its massive database of internet sources, past essays, past examination papers, published journals, and old dissertations.

The tool also compares your text against the current and past published content on Google Scholar and Google Books. The software is fast and supports multiple formats, such as Docx, Doc, Txt, PDF, RTF, and HTML. The duplicate checker supports over 190 languages and can check text and URLs.

Plagiarisma isn’t limited to plagiarism detection; it also checks the text for grammar errors and has a synonymizer for rewriting content using synonyms. Besides, it has a similarity checker that compares two pieces of text using the Levenshtein method and Fuzzy logic. Copyscape doesn’t have these extra features, which is why Plagiarisma is its great alternative.

This tool is free but has four premium options, including $8 per day, $15 per month, $25 for three months, and $45 for six months.

8. Plagium

Plagium is owned by Septet Systems Inc., which provides advanced search solutions to the government, industry, and public. One of its unique features includes uploading any file, whether a PDF, word document, or text file. After uploading, Plagium scans the file and creates a report of any text duplicates.

The software offers a free quick search option that allows users to scan their documents quickly. But if you conduct many searches, you may be required to sign up and search for $0.04 per page. It also provides a deep search at $ 0.08 per page, which compares your text to more sources on the internet.

The third option is File Search which lets you compare various text documents and generate a visually friendly report that you can easily understand and work on. The cost is $0.005 per page. More importantly, Plagium integrates with Google Drive, allowing you to work hassle-free between Google drive and the tool. There’s also a Google Docs Plagium addon. The last three features aren’t available on Copyscape, making Plagium an ideal alternative.

9. EasyBib

EasyBib has the plagiarism checker and grammar checker working together to indicate duplicate text and grammar errors. Using the tool is easy: click on ‘check your paper,’ paste the text in the text box or import a file from the computer or Google Drive. The software will conduct plagiarism and grammar checks simultaneously and display the results.

The results come in three categories: grammar, plagiarism, and expert check. You can click on each option to see the errors and edit.

I uploaded a random file from my Google Drive and ran a check. The results appeared after a few seconds. I could only see part of the grammar errors and was prompted to sign up for a free trial to see all grammar and plagiarism errors.

There’s an option to choose the English language for checking your document. You can choose U.S. English, UK English, CA English, and AU English. While Copyscape only checks for plagiarism, EasyBib checks for plagiarism and grammar mistakes, making it an impressive alternative. EasyBib has a free account and two paid accounts at $9.95 per month and $19.95 per month.

10. Unicheck

Are you looking for more than just pointing out similarities? Unicheck is an online tool that will help you achieve authenticity. Trusted by over 1100 learning institutions globally, Unicheck provides a complete solution for academic institutions to detect duplicates and text modifiers and prevent content cheating.

The tool can unveil the manipulation of texts, and if detected, it will provide you with the details of the modification listed in the report. However, it only focuses on the crucial matches and will ignore common phrases. That means you get a report on the relevant information only.

Unicheck allows you to access its simple and easily understandable reports anytime, which are also available for download. This tool is a great Copyscape alternative, especially when dealing with academic content since an instructor can analyze a student’s progress by viewing the statistics accumulated over a period of time.

Conclusion

In my opinion, ProWritingAid’s Plagiarism Checker is the best Copyscape alternative because it scans your text against over a billion pages online, making it difficult for any duplicate content to be left out. It has many other features like grammar, style, diction, cliche, structure, transition, overused words, and more. So, it takes care of all your content needs.

Its pricing model is also reasonable; you pay according to the number of checks rather than words, making it an affordable option. The tool is user-friendly and integrates well with Google Docs and MS Word.

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Over the last few months, I have received numerous emails asking about writers and where to find them. Writers can often be a headache for people to outsource and can sometimes eat up a lot of time. Our team likes to hire and fire fast and not spend much time on a writer if they don’t produce something great the first time.

Hiring a writer is more than just paying for a service; it’s an investment in both your company and yourself. It ensures your company is properly represented and saving yourself hours of time that can be better spent focusing on any of the countless other tasks that come with running an online business.

There are also many different writers out there, too. There are writers who specialize in different fields, such as SEO, copywriting, dissertation ghostwriters, essay writers, writers to maximize business plans, content writers, white paper writers, resume writers… the list is almost endless and all of which can be found on freelance sites.

First, if you are looking for a writer for hire, you need to think about exactly what you want.

Before you can actually go about hiring a writer, you’ll need to decide whether you want to hire one as a part of your staff, work with a freelancer or an agency. All options have their own benefits and drawbacks.

Working with a freelance writer is a more streamlined process and oftentimes more cost-effective. Interviewing can be tedious and time-consuming. Instead of meeting with multiple people, you can place an ad online and make a decision based on the submissions of writing samples you receive (risky but fast).

Whereas hired writers are either salaried or hourly, freelancers are usually paid per project. If you find a writer who you’d like to work with more consistently, you can offer to pay a retainer fee to reserve a determined amount of time for your projects.

Compared to the possibly-costly process of firing an employee, ending a relationship with a freelancer is much easier. All you have to do is send an email letting them know you’re no longer interested in working together (sometimes you can get someone who sends a million emails asking why they were fired and for another chance – as I have experienced!)

Hiring a writer as part of your staff isn’t without its perks. Even with email, Skype, and other modern technologies, nothing compares to communicating face-to-face. Sometimes, explaining exactly what you want is easier in person.

Working with a content management team such as Content Refined, offers the ability to be hands off and hire a skilled team who just produces quality content. Plus, many content management teams also offer scheduling and marketing services.

Most content management teams have a team of writers so you can rest assured knowing there will always be someone available to take on your project. If you’re dissatisfied with the quality or style of the assignment, you can simply ask for a different writer’s spin on it.

Like with freelancers, payment is usually per assignment and based on the services provided. However, you’ll likely end up paying more when working with content management teams, which makes sense since a team is bound to have more expenses than an individual. However, with additional services like promoting content across various social media platforms, your money will be put to good use.

Now that we’ve gone over why hiring a professional writer is essential, let’s take a look at the 5 best places to hire writers.

#1 Upwork

“To connect businesses with great talent to work without limits.”

This is the biggest and best platform that we hire a lot of our team from.

Upwork is a website that connects freelancers with those who are looking to hire them. This does not only have to be article writing it can be a wide range of different tasks from hiring a VA to getting someone to build you a website.

#2 Facebook

With over 1 billion users active on a daily basis, Facebook is undoubtedly one of the best ways to find a professional writer. Unlike Upwork—which only provides you with the information submitted by the freelancer—Facebook gives you far more insight into who you’re dealing with as a person.

Experienced freelancers may even have reviews on their wall and clients on their friend’s list. We have only recently started to use Facebook for hiring, but the outcome has been fantastic so far. They are a bit more pricy then the other places listed here but can sometimes be worth it.

By utilizing its search function, you can easily connect with thousands of people—both individually and in groups. For example, this group https://www.facebook.com/groups/copyjobs/ features over 13,000 members who are all skilled copywriters.

Because business dealings managed via Facebook are usually done in private, it’s hard to discern how payments are usually handled, we usually use Paypal for our transactions with them.

The greatest pro of finding writers on Facebook is its massive user base. The biggest downside is its publicity and the risk of scorned clients or freelancers posting negativity on your wall.

#3 Fiverr

Fiverr (Not recommended) is almost the antithesis of Upwork. Instead of posting jobs, those looking to hire a freelancer, select a category, then a sub-category of work and choose the freelancer they feel best fits their needs from the listings. We find that the pool isn’t as large as Upwork but there are still some good quality writers if you give it enough time.

Rather than applying to different jobs, freelancers on Fiverr post a listing that specifies what type of work they’re willing to do, their skills, and their rate. Each listing comes with three options: basic, standard, and premium—each with its own rate and services offered.

The going rate for 1000 words seems to be anywhere between $10 and $25, depending on the seller.

The biggest advantage of using Fiverr is being able to compare and contrasts the many different sellers to be able to find the one that’s ideal for you.

The biggest downside to using Fiverr is the inability to post jobs with specific requirements and I find the pool isn’t as big as other platforms.

#4 Onlinejobs.ph

Onlinejobs.ph is a website that allows you to outsource work that you have to skilled individuals in the Philippines. I haven’t used this one but I have heard some great things about it.

When looking for someone to hire, you can either post a job and wait until someone applies or search through the site’s resume database using keywords.

Once you’ve found someone you’re interested in working with, you’re ready for the next step: Ironing out the details like payment (which is handled via PayPal) and expectations.

The greatest part of using onlinejobs.ph is its TimeProof tool: Software that records any activity, takes screenshots of the freelancer’s screen, and then sends them off to the employer automatically.

As with all outsourcing, you run the risk of working with someone who isn’t too familiar with your language, which may end up leading to issues. In my opinion, this is the biggest disadvantage.

Before working on onlinejobs.ph, it’s important to remember to read up on the conversion between your nation’s currency and the Filipino peso.

#5 Guru

Guru.com seems similar to Fiverr in how employers sift through freelancer listings and profiles in order to find someone that can provide what they need. Like Upwork, the website manages payment by serving as a middleman. Unlike Upwork, where the website’s team ultimately decides if the work has been fulfilled satisfactorily, Guru claims that the employer ultimately decides whether the provided work is worthy of payment.

Leaving the terms of payment up to the employer is simultaneously Guru’s biggest pro (for the employer) and con (for the freelancer).

Out of the 5 websites listed above, I’d have to say Upwork is the best for finding writers. Even though Facebook has a massive user base, the straightforward and streamlined bidding process for Upwork makes it easy to find someone to work with.

If you have any questions or know of any other places, I would love to hear about it! Please mention any other writing resources below and what it’s advantages/disadvantages are (self promotional posts are allowed within reason 🙂 )

5 Tips for Managing Writers

Now that you know 5 locations to hire writers here are 5 tips on how to manager the writers you have hired.

Building up any website takes a lot of working with writers to get the most useful quality articles possible.  Across all my money sites, I work with a team of writers to keep the content new every week and to keep the organic traffic numbers growing.

As you can imagine, that’s a lot of writers to manage.  So this week I thought I’d share the best ways to hire and maintain a team of solid writers, keep them organized, and keep on track with what everyone is doing.

In addition to these practises I have developed over the years many of these lessons have been learned via ContentRefined.com where we have produced over 1,000,000 words/month for clients!

1. Hiring Writers

I’ve talked about this before, but hiring freelance writers shouldn’t be taken lightly.  You want a native English speaking, strong and competent writer with solid experience.  I always ask them to do a test assignment before bringing them onto the team. Here’s an example job posting from UpWork.

To check for grammar, I always ask the applicant to fix a couple of grammatically incorrect statements.  That’s a quick way to check whether they’re legit English speakers or not. If they provide some examples of their work, that’s a good way to quickly check them out as well.  But the best way is to assign them a test article to really see their chops.

2. The 10% Rule

I stole this rule from Jack Welch, former GE CEO, about maintaining the best teams.  In a nutshell, he says that you should fire the bottom 10% of your staff every year.  I apply this (in a way) to writing teams to make sure that they’re always stacked with the best writers.  Say you have 10 writers on a content team. Every month or so, I cut out the 1 bottom performer and replace them with someone new.  Constantly refreshing teams like this has worked well for making sure that writers are on their game and not getting lazy.

3. No Second Chances

Another tip with freelance writers: don’t give second chances.  It’s happened a few too many times where I’ll give somebody the benefit of the doubt for a mistake or a late assignment, and sure enough they go out and repeat that bad behaviour every time.  When you depend on sticking to a schedule and you really need writers to be on the ball, you can’t let anything slide. If they screw up, move on and hire someone new. You don’t have to be rude about it.  Just let them know the problem(s) and why you can’t continue to work with them. It’s not personal; it’s business.

4. Keeping Organized: Spreadsheets!

A master spreadsheet that shows the status of team members has been the most effective strategy for keeping track of everybody.  I check in with a spreadsheet like this one pretty much every day to review the work in progress.  If I’ve assigned something and haven’t heard back from the writer for a day or two, I’ll follow up.  If there’s still no response, those articles need to be reassigned.  This simple spreadsheet will save you the huge headache of confusing emails and trying to mentally keep track of everybody.  Just be sure to actually update it and don’t let things slip by, because that will make things confusing really quickly.  Especially if you’re dealing with 10 or more writers, and various writing teams across different businesses, you want to make sure everything is well-organized.

I also always have an editor go through every article or piece of web copy that I have written.  It’s great to have a second set of eyes on any text to help with spelling, grammar, flow, and readability.  It’s usually this editor who I also get to run every piece of text through Copyscape to check for plagiarism.  So in this master spreadsheet, you can keep track of what’s on your editor’s plate at the moment too.

5. Consistent Payments

Some freelancers will want to stick with UpWork for payments for security, but more often than not our writers ask for PayPal.  It avoids the UpWork fees.  No matter which way your writers want to go for payments, I recommend that you stick to a consistent pay schedule.  Every week at the same time of day is ideal.  Let your writers know when they can expect to be paid, and keep track of the work they’ve completed on a week by week basis.  Here’s an example of what that payment tracking spreadsheet can look like.  In this example, payments would ideally be made on Sundays, because the weekly tracking goes from Monday to Sunday.  So writers know that if they hand something in on a Monday, they won’t be paid until that coming Sunday.

Final Thoughts: Keep Your Writers Happy

Consistent work, positive reinforcement, and clear communication are probably the three main things that have helped me keep some awesome writers around for a long time.  When you’re working with someone primarily through email, it helps to have a friendly tone and to be as clear as possible with direction.  Mutual respect and trust is the goal.

What have you found to be the most effective way of managing writers or content teams?  Are there any tools you use that I should be checking out?  Let me know in the comments!

Content writing is one of the steps that has to happen within content marketing. Content marketing consists of a series of steps, including business strategy, keyword research, content writing, publishing, and marketing the created content. Too often, the process of content writing gets mistaken for a business doing content marketing.

Content Refined delivers exceptionally high valued content to enhance your website and improve its rank on search engines.

Today Content Refined turns 2.5 years old and Maddie has recently shared a BIG post about the journey!

Read about the entire journey here – Content Marketing Company or my Content Refined business review.

Plus they just had a video produced to help people learn more about Content Refined…

In this post I want to share 3 lessons I have learned from my position (idea identification, initial system architecture and assembling/stewarding the team).

Background:

In the summer of 2016 Maddie joined my team with the mandate of systematizing the content creation process for my portfolio of sites. She killed it!

From that effort we decided to launch Content Refined as a content marketing company.

I documented that launch when I announced it in this post – https://websiteincome.com/content-marketing-strategy-launch-business/

It grew incredibly well, achieving 10% week over week growth for the first few months.

There have certainly been a fair number of challenges/opportunities and in this post I hope to share from my perspective what the 3 most significant lessons were.

Lesson 1: Systems Can’t Replace People!

For everyone that reads this site they know I LOVE systems. Systematized business processes and systematic solutions to problems are core values for the business.

However, despite the engineers desire in me to build a system that doesn’t require great people to run it never happens. Great systems allow great people to execute better.

As I significantly shifted my focus in 2017 to adbank my core businesses needed to be managed and any business where there was a manager responsible for running the business did well. However any business that was solely dependent on a system went off the rails.

Maddie grew the business, Laura managed it while Maddie was on mat leave and I have had limited ongoing involvement. No system could have been built to adapt to the changed and achieved what the team has achieved!

Lesson 2: Churn is a Moral Sapingl!

Content Refined has been a great business with significant initial success and very solid longer term performance. But as with any recurring revenue business that is non-essential, churn is the enemy!

Trying to keep growth moving while fighting churn is a never ending battle and can be very unmotivating.

Sometimes even solid months feel like this…

For anyone who ever wants to dig more into recurring revenue business models this is the best article on any subject ever and it focuses on metrics – https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/

Lesson 3: Focus on your Strengths in a Congruent way!

Congruent has been my favourite business word for awhile. Ensuring the people, value proposition and systems are all aligned congruently is critically important.

Building that congruence around the set of strengths that makes you unique and focusing on it has been where our biggest successes have come from and also, when we drifted, where our biggest failures occurred.

For Content Refined, the effort around data analysis (to determine what tools/metrics give our content the best predictive ability to perform well in Google) has been very rewarding. Trying to broaden and sell other services where our set of strengths didn’t align didn’t get off the ground in a significant way (for example, an email marketing service to existing clients).

Being accountable for results and not just words, as a content marketing company that uses data (and the thousands of articles we’ve already published) to continually refine what is working now, is what has Content Refined clients loving the service.

Summary

I hope my view on the 3 key lessons while stewarding the growth of Content Refined has been useful.

If you have any content marketing needs be sure to book a free call with Maddie or Laura… they often share some pretty incredible and specific to your site insights on those calls! You can book here if there is availability.