Whether you blog for pleasure or for profit, you invest your time, effort, and metal acumen developing content.

Your work could have a political, educational, or emotional focus. You could write about how to buy stocks or how to remove stains from cloth diapers, but whatever it is that causes your digits to move is something that is important to you. Most importantly, what you publish belongs to you.

One of the most serious irritations to bloggers today is the flood of people who want something for nothing. Folks who lack creativity troll the interwebs hunting for appealing content to fill their websites with readers and keep their advertisers happy.  Since some individuals have neither the writing nor research skills to continually come up with quality material, they steal the intellectual property of others.

Most of us know someone who has been plagiarized. I have found my articles posted on websites around the world including news blogs that garner millions of daily hits. But I have discovered ways to defend myself and I’ll pass a few tips on to you so that you will know how to establish ownership of your creative material and thusly prevent it from theft.

The first thing that any blogger should do is copyright his or her content. You do not have to be CNN or the Wall Street Journal in order to do this.  A one-stop FREE stop you must visit is myfreecopyright.com . Once you have been accepted your posts will be registered and the registry numbers e-mailed to you daily for your records. The digital fingerprint is your evidence should you ever need to pursue an online thief.

Another great feature is the fact that having their logo featured on your website is a visual deterrent to would-be pilferers. Simply put, if someone sees this , they might think twice before booting your blog.

Another free service that you can use is creativecommons.org , which gives you the ability to determine exactly how your work can be shared on the internet.

Now that you have protected your work, you might want to check for evidence of theft, and there are a number of ways to do this. I’ll give you a few of the easier options.

First- try Google Alerts . Simply enter a few key phrases from that epic blog entry and Google will e-mail you if it is copied anywhere on the net.

Another dandy that I use is Copyscape.com . The great part about Copyscape is that all you need do is enter the RSS feed or URL of your blog and let Copyscape do the roaming for you. The drawback is that the service only permits a few checks per month for free and is otherwise paid for by the consumer (A.K.A : you).

So now your content is copyrighted and you have discovered that some dolt has ripped you off. What do you do to track the miscreant down?

Sometimes the person has contact information featured on their website and if this is so, a diplomatic e-mail should force the administrator to either remove the content or publish it under your terms. In some cases you can work out a resolution in a way that everyone wins. This is the ideal.

Unfortunately though, there are serial plagiarists. These are more difficult to find because they know what they are doing is wrong and they usually take steps to try and avoid being identified.  But you might still have remedy thanks to Domain Tools’ award-winning WHOIS service . Simply forward your Creative Commons license or MyFreeCopyright registration page to the offender and he or she may just behave.

As a last resort, think revenge. Most websites operated by content sharks feature Google Adsense or Amazon affiliate programs. You can contact Google and they will remove the website from their index and suspend their Adsense account after an investigation. If you absolutely cannot get any reaction from the violator, contact the company that pays their bills. No reputable business will want to be associated with someone who does not abide by copyright laws.

When you work as hard at your craft as you do, you deserve to be acknowledged for your efforts. By taking a few minutes to protect yourself, you will ensure that your art remains your own.

Blog well and prosper.