Episode 578: What to Do When Your Blog Images Have Been Stolen or Used Without Your Permission with Kathy Berget

EBT578 – Kathy Berget

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Megan Porta  00:37

Here’s a hot little topic to get to you riled up or to make you feel a lot better. This is something we have not covered, I don’t think ever on this podcast, which is kind of amazing, because it is a big deal, and it’s something that happens, unfortunately, fairly often to us food bloggers. Kathy Berget, from Beyond The Chicken Coop, joins me in this episode to talk about what to do when your blog images have been stolen or just used without your permission. If you’ve been blogging long enough this has happened to you, whether you know it or not, so Kathy talks you through some really simple steps about what to do, ranging from just ignoring it. There are cases when you probably should ignore when your images have been used without your permission, but most of the time, there’s something that you can do about it. Kathy talks about a service she uses called Pixsy, p, i, x, s, y, and talks about how to use that, what they can do for you if your images have been stolen. Everything you need to know about this topic is in this episode. So I hope you aren’t super overwhelmed by it, and I hope that you find it very helpful. It’s a juicy one. This is episode number 578 sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor  01:49

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Megan Porta  03:19

Kathy is the author, photographer, recipe developer, and writer at Beyond the Chicken Coop. She creates delicious home-cooked recipes utilizing what is grown and raised. Kathy is a former elementary school principal and has three grown kids; twin boys and one girl. Kathy and her husband live in the country on their own little farm.

Megan Porta  03:39

Kathy, so good to have you back on the podcast. How are you? 

Kathy Berget  03:43

Hi, Megan, thanks so much for having me. I’m doing really well. Thank you.

Megan Porta  03:46

Yay. When was the last time we talked on the podcast? I can’t remember. 

Kathy Berget  03:50

Oh, it’s been a few years. Yeah, I’d have to go back and look as well.

Megan Porta  03:54

I’d have to go look. But it’s been too long. So I’m glad you’re here. We’re going to talk about what to do when your blog, images have been stolen or used without your permission. I love this topic because it’s like one of those little details we don’t always talk about, right?

Kathy Berget  04:09

Right, right, and that’s an unfortunate topic, yeah, but I think it’s a necessary topic to talk about as well. 

Megan Porta  04:14

Yeah, very, very much, agree. But before we get into that, do you have another fun fact to share with us?

Kathy Berget  04:20

Yes, so my fun fact is that I do not like peanut butter at all, and I never have.

Megan Porta  04:28

That is so interesting. So I have another food blogger friend who doesn’t like peanut butter. Kara from Sweetly Splendid. She’s always like, I don’t get it. It smells gross and it tastes disgusting. So does it just have like, a weird smell to you?

04:42

Yeah, I don’t like the smell of it, although I kind of overcame that when I had kids and had to make them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But I used to have nothing to do with it. And I asked my mom, I’m like, did I get sick when I was a kid on it? And she said, No, you just never liked it so.

Megan Porta  04:56

I think you’re one of the only humans to say that. I’m just trying to imagine a world without peanut butter, as you’re talking.

05:04

I wish that I did, because I think it would make life easier in so many ways, like a peanut butter jelly sandwich travels really well, yeah, but sandwich you have to, you know, figure out all these ways to keep it cold. So now,

Megan Porta  05:16

do you like other spreads, like hazelnut, like Nutella?

05:20

Yeah, yeah, I do. I really like almond butter. Oh, especially like with maple and salt in it. Oh, yeah, but I don’t eat a ton of it, but I do enjoy that interesting. So

Megan Porta  05:32

almond butter is good. Peanut Butter not good. It

Kathy Berget  05:37

doesn’t make any sense. I know,

Megan Porta  05:40

hey, it is what it is, right, right? All right. So I would love for you to tell us a little bit about your blog. Kathy, give us a little background on you and your blog. Yeah,

05:50

so my blog is called Beyond the chicken coop, and I started it in 2015 and it focuses on homemade recipes that I make for my family. And we utilize, I use a lot of utilize a lot of what we grow and raise on our little farm. So a lot of homemade, from scratch recipes.

Megan Porta  06:09

I love your blog. It’s so pretty. Your photos are so beautiful. I’m looking at it right now. And are you still doing your podcast?

06:15

Thanks, Megan. You know, I put the podcast on hold last summer, okay? And I haven’t picked it back up again, and that was called Preserving the Pantry, and it focused on preserving foods of all kind, canning, drying, freezing, and so right now, that’s it’s still there, but I haven’t worked on it for a year.

Megan Porta  06:33

I have this theory that people, or food bloggers who started podcasts, even if they are on hold, are going to really benefit their businesses right now because of that, because I feel like this is totally off topic, but I just want to say this, like, the more well rounded you are as a brand, like the more avenues you have and branches you have as a brand, like Google and everyone else sees you as more of an established powerhouse kind of brand slash company. I don’t know that’s just something I’ve been thinking about. 

Kathy Berget  07:03

No, I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And I think for me, I don’t want to get rid of it, because there’s a good chance I could come back to it. Yeah, and there’s so much about it I enjoyed, and it gave me a different avenue than the blog to reach different people and a different set of people.

Megan Porta  07:19

Well, I hope you go back to it someday, if not, it was valuable. I mean, I listened to your episodes and they were so good. I just loved what you put together there. Oh, thank you. Just a little side note. Okay, so thank you for all of that. And then you are going to talk to us today about what to do when your blog images have been stolen. So I guess, like, just give us a little bit of a background on that. Did you have blog images stolen? How did you get interested in this topic?

Kathy Berget 07:48

Well, unfortunately, as I said, it’s a necessary thing, and I’ve kind of just fallen into it. You know, as food bloggers, it’s such a hard job. We have so much that we have to do to prepare a blog post, let alone with, you know, all the changes that already happen with, like Google updates and algorithm updates and social media changes, and then on top of that, we have people that might steal our content, and I mean, like they use it without our permission to benefit themselves. I feel like food bloggers know what to do, or are more familiar with when their posts are stolen and it’s put up on another website. But when an image is used for a commercial business, like a restaurant or a market or like a to go menu or grocer, those type of things, they’re using our images so that they can sell something and so that their business is profitable from it. So that’s a really big problem. And when I first started food blogging, almost 10 years ago, I knew nothing about photography, and so I quickly learned as much as I possibly could. And somewhere along that journey, it was brought to my attention that a few of my images were beginning to be used by restaurants, and it would usually I would get, like, a direct message from either an employee or a former employee or a customer, sometimes another food blogger, and they would just send me a link and say, Hey, your image is being used by this restaurant. And I’d go and I’d look, and I’m like, oh my goodness, why are they doing that? And so when that first happened, I would reach out to whoever is using my recipe, usually was a restaurant, and I would either direct message them or send them an email, if I could find an email, and I would say something like, you have used my copyrighted image without my permission. How are you going to resolve this issue? And I kind of put that open ended statement there, and in the back of my mind, I always thought, oh, maybe they’ll pay me. Maybe they’re like, sorry, guess what? That never worked. And so, but I had the hope that was there. And so sometimes I would get a message back and they would say, sorry, we took it down. Or they would just take it down and not not address it. They would just take it down. Sometimes they would ignore it. Yeah. Sometimes they would challenge me on it, like, prove who you are, which I get, because there’s so much spam spammers, so many spammers out there anyway. And then sometimes they would even say, This is not your image, it’s mine. I took the picture and I can prove it. And I just thought, Wait, what?

Megan Porta  10:16

How can that? What are you kidding?

Kathy Berget 10:18

No, and I still have that happen today, even with some people that I have to contact directly, and it just floors me that, I mean, they obviously know that they didn’t take the picture. So yeah, I just, yeah. Just amazes me, but it, you know, I didn’t have any teeth in anything that I did. I didn’t know what else to do beyond that and so, but when I I did contact the people, and I said, you’re using my copyrighted image. I think photographers, anybody who takes a picture, whether it’s on your camera or on your iPhone or whatever you’re using, you automatically have a copyright to that photo. You don’t have to do anything to obtain a copyright, and so all of your images belong to you. Now the Copyright Office has another level where you can register an image, and that makes a public record of your ownership, and it gives you just another layer of protection. You actually issued a number with that picture and everything. And if you were to actually, if you needed to take a case to let it like a lost file a lawsuit against a company. You could only do that if your photo has been registered. You could still seek licensing compensation for a photo that has been used. But if it was actually to go to litigation, it has to be registered. You can register a photo at any time, though, and so as long as it’s done before you file a claim. But I think that’s just important to know, because a lot of people aren’t aware that they have that copyright already, whether they’ve done anything to that picture or not, it’s their picture if they took the picture.

Megan Porta  11:49

Okay? So people restaurants were using your images and like, just taking them off your website and just putting them in their material, yep. So

Kathy Berget 12:00

it was used in a variety of ways. And some of the people like they would have it on Facebook and say, you know, special of the day, beer battered fish. And they would list the price and the hours of their restaurant, but it would be my picture that they’re using to draw people with. Now, some of those people that contact me back would say, just so, you know, we didn’t take your picture off of your blog, we found it on Google. Well, still my picture and I just, I feel like a lot of people are unaware that just because it’s sitting on Google, when they do an image image search, doesn’t mean that they have the right to use that so there’s a lot of things we have to do to educate, I think the public too, but that’s a very slow process and probably a bigger battle than I can fight, yeah, but yeah. And then I find images on websites, on menus. A lot of to go menus, like the delivery menus, have to be images that they have on their menu, and so that is quite rampant that you’ll find a lot. I’ll find a lot of my images on those like to go menus, but I find them in like markets, like fish markets or fruit markets, even on Amazon. I have found them like somebody’s using, let’s say, a mandolin. And then they have, you know how they have, like the little thumbnail pictures you can click through. Oftentimes, one of those thumbnails, they’ll use an image, and I have found several of those too.

Megan Porta  13:23

Wow. So what if we don’t know if our images are being stolen? Is there an easy way to determine if they are

Kathy Berget 13:29

so there are a few ways to determine if there are. So you can, you can go right to your own web page, and I used to be able to do a right click and then search Google for this image, and then search image source. Just about two weeks ago, my computer update, and it’s slightly different now. So I have to right click on my image and save the image address or URL, and then go to a Google page, and you click the little camera icon, like you’re going to search for an image, and you type, you just paste your URL on there. It’ll pull up your image, and then you can click on Search image source, and it will pull up places that are using your image. Now, a lot of them are legitimate too, like it’ll be your own web pages that are showing up on there. It’ll be Pinterest that is showing up on there, or your own Facebook page. So you have to go in and click them, but it’s going to show you a lot of it might show you the Facebook pages from restaurants using them. So I do find a lot in using that in that manner. 

Kathy Berget 14:32

And then I also, just about four years ago, came across an online company that helps me do this, and it’s called Pixsy, p, i, x, s, y, and I know there’s other companies that offer a similar service, but this is the one that I’ve been working with, so it’s I’m only familiar with this one, but Pixsy is an online service that allows photographers, and it’s any photographer, not just food photographers, but allows you to track your images and see where and how they’re being used. So it really helps you find and fight image theft. And so you can upload your images directly into Pixie, or you can link like I link my Instagram account, and it pulls my images in. And once they have your images, they start scanning the web, and they flag every time it’s found it also they try to flag it if it’s being used in a commercial manner. And so you can go in and look and see exactly how it is being used. And you do have to your do your due diligence, though, because just because you find a company using it doesn’t mean that they are using it in a neglectful way, or at least how I consider it in an inappropriate way. So there was a cranberry picture that I have that a cranberry manufacturer grower was using, and when I went in to look at it, they had used a picture for my recipe for their cranberry web page, but then they linked directly back to my recipe for people to go make it. So they were using my picture without my permission, but to me, it was in an appropriate way, because they were linking back to me and sending me traffic from their website. So that was okay with that. So you have to go in and look at these and see where there are. The same thing with food bloggers. You know, it’ll often come up that I’ll get another food bloggers using my image, but it’s in a roundup post, and they’re using it in a way, right? Yeah, I’m totally okay with so you always want to go in and look and see how is it being used? Is it using in a way that is only benefiting the company for them? Are they using it as, like a marketing technique, like, Hey, come here and eat this or buy this, because here it is,

Megan Porta  16:32

Right. So Pixsy, tell me more about that. So you sign up for it, and then is it something that you have to pay for?

Kathy Berget 16:39

So Pixie, you can start with a free. Okay, Pixie is free to use, and they have different levels of services that you can use, but you can start free, which is a great way to test it out and see if, if it’s a right fit for you, or if it benefits you at all. And it’s a limited then on how many pictures you can upload, but it will start to screen those pictures. Or if you already found your picture on your own, you did a Google search, you can upload that picture directly and then file a case. And so once you have found a commercial business, so it needs to be a website that is commercial, or a major publication or an institute or government agency, are the ones that they will actually go and find you can file a case on, and they’ll file licensing fees and try to get some sort of compensation for them using your image. File a case, and then they do the rest of the work, and if they get compensation from a company for you, them using your image, Pixie then takes half of that compensation. So if it was $400 they’re gonna keep 200 and I get 200 and to me, that’s been fair, because I was getting nothing before.

Sponsor  17:52

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Kathy Berget 19:18

Right? Well, and they, and they also demand that the image be taken down, and if it if they’re not successful in getting a case resolved, they also give you other tools, so you can take it to take down an image or file complaint or things. But when it’s coming from a more legal type letter is coming from more legal type place, rather than just sure myself, yep, it has a little more weight to it. 

Megan Porta  19:41

Exactly, yep. So how does DMCA play into this? Did they is that what they do? Can you do this on your own? How do you do it? 

Kathy Berget  19:49

You can do it on your own, and you can do it through Pixsy that has some quick links that you can do it. You can also just go directly to Google and do it file a DMCA. And it is really kind of a takedown issue. If Google finds that somebody is using your content without permission, they can make a strike against that web page, or it will not be found in search results. You could also go, if it’s like monetized website or business, you can go to their ad network and file a case there. You can also use us like web page, like who is, and type in the web address, and it will sometimes tell you who their host is. And if you can find their host a lot of times, it’s blocked by like Cloud Flare, so it’s hard to track those down anymore, but you can find who their host is, and you can also send a takedown notice with the host. And they’ll also, they’ll all address those.

Megan Porta  20:47

I can see this being a rabbit hole. I remember back in the day when was it. I think Pinterest people used to steal my stuff. On Pinterest, they would take images from my blog and then create a new pin, directing to their content. And oh my gosh, Kathy, I remember getting so mad. I would just like, I can’t believe this person’s doing this. And then I would find all of these other ones. I would spend like, three days just being so upset and requesting that everything be taken down. I can see this being the same, like, going down. 

Kathy Berget  21:19

Yeah, totally. And I have to find a balance. I have to set myself some time aside and say, this is all I’m going to do it. It is helpful with Pixsy, because they have my images, and they’ll send me a notification once a month of some flagged images. And so I’ll go in and look at those every once a while. I can’t help it, and I’ll just get on and I’ll start like doing a Google search of them, but it is a very negative space, and so, and I get angry, so I try not to spend too much time in there, and because I don’t like that feeling. And so once I’m not there, I just have to let it go. And, you know, I can spend some time and then say, Okay, I’m done, and I’ll come back in a week, or maybe a couple weeks, and look again. But I try not to put too much time into that? Yeah, I think another thing you can do too is there sometimes we just have to ignore when we find an image and that might feel wrong, but there are some images that I find, they’re being used that I don’t know what to do with, and so I just have to set them aside in my mind and say, I can’t I can’t worry about this one. So there’s some that I feel like, people use your images as click bait, and you click on it, and it takes you, and it quickly changes the website to something else. I don’t want to spend any time on there, because I don’t know what’s happening, and I didn’t know where to begin.

Megan Porta  22:35

know exactly what you’re talking about? Yeah, this is, like, what I was talking about with Pinterest. Like, all of a sudden, you’re like, Wait, where am I?

Kathy Berget 22:41

Yes, yeah. And then there’s some and they the instead of, like, ending with a.com or DOT whatever, it’ll end with like.tr, or br, some couple letters from a different country, yeah, and a very weird and you go there, and I don’t even get what they’re trying to do, it’ll have 50 pictures up of beer battered fish, all from different blogs, all with a price, like you can buy them, but there’s no way somebody’s buying those. And so I just have learned to not even go to look

Megan Porta  23:09

Face away. 

Kathy Berget  23:10

Yeah, yeah, yes, right. So you do have to just kind of ignore some of these if you don’t really want to get into there. But you’re right. It is a huge rabbit hole that you start going down, but it’s amazing how many businesses are using our images. I have found them on distribution sites like for restaurants or grocery stores. You go in there and you look and you’re like, Wait, that’s my image. Why are you using my image? And it’s just it seems to be never ending, and it’s as easy as the business going in and clicking and, you know, copying and pasting and putting it in there, when we’ve done all this work to right, create an image, and that’s all they have to do.

Megan Porta  23:50

Yeah, I’m so I’m currently looking for little tasks for my teenage boys to do for my business, because they’re willing and able and wanting to earn money. Well, one of them is, one of them is not anyway, this is this something that they could do? Because I don’t think they would get angry about it. They would just be like, you know, X, Y, Z, here’s what I need to do. Whereas we the people who create our blogs and we feel so tied to our images and our content, we get angry and upset. But maybe having somebody else do this for us is a good route.

Kathy Berget 24:21

Yeah, at least to flag them for you and say, Hey, I found these. Go in and look and see now and and you’re exactly right. And so, because, and it does take time and energy, and a couple of things to note, like, if you do file a case with Pixsy, is the time frame can be kind of lengthy. It can be anywhere from several weeks to several months before that they find any resolution. And then sometimes this is frustrating to me, but sometimes they will actually decide that they are going to drop a case because they haven’t been able to reach resolution. And I just like, No, this company is using my image. Don’t drop it. But their company, and they’ve put all this time and resources in, and I guess you know, there’s a tipping point for them. Of how much do we keep investing if we’re only going to get this much money back?

Megan Porta  25:04

Yeah, yeah, it’s a balance, right? Yeah. How much energy do I want to waste? How much time versus like, like, how much do I want this to be, right? 

Kathy Berget  25:14

Yes. And when they do that, they give you a few resources of other things you can try, like, a takedown notice or things like that. So again, then you have to decide, is that something you want to do. 

Megan Porta  25:25

How often do you get to the end of a resolution and you’re like, Okay, I’m happy. I’m happy with how this turned out.

Kathy Berget 25:33

So anytime there’s a resolution, I’m going to be happy. And the pricing on Pixsy depends on many, many factors, but for me, it has ranged from a couple 100 to a couple $1,000 and that, to me, is well worth it. But again, it takes some time, and sometimes it just is a matter of where they are with the process and how the contact is with the company that they’re there. Once you have filed a case, Pixie is in constant communication with you about, okay, here where we here’s where we are. We’ve gathering evidence, and they let you know what, what amount they are going after right away. Within Pixie, when you’re filing a case, I always just allow Pixsy to choose the amount of licensing fee. But if you had a set amount, you could put it in there, and if they agreed with it, then they will go after that as well, but I feel like that’s their area of expertise, so I’m gonna allow them to set that amount Okay, and it’s going to vary. When I first started, was a lot less than where I am now, I feel like kind of your track record, where they feel like what they can get is going to make a difference, but there’s all sorts of variables there as well. So the more experience you have, you can put in information about what type of equipment and training you’ve had, if you’ve received any accolades or rewards for your photography, those all increase the value of your photography. If a photograph is registered, it’s going to be worth a lot more money than if it’s not, it’s almost double the amount of money. And then also how that image is being used. So what size company is using it like? What is their reach? Where has it gone? And then, how many times have they used it? I had one restaurant that would post their daily specials, and I went through and counted up that sometimes I spend too much time doing this. I counted up on facebook how many times they used an image of mine for it was for ham and scallop potatoes. And in a year, they used it 46 times. Wow, that’s excessive. No, they just everything they had, yeah, they had used us as a special sometimes it was in a collage. So anytime I find that information, when I’m making a case, I include that in my information with Pixsy, they have like, a little note section where you can type a lot in, oh, wow. I also always screenshot the picture and their website, the web address, and I include that. They do the same thing, but they also have a lot of cases. And so if I can narrow it down for them and show them where it is, I’ve not only captured the evidence, so in case it disappears, I’ve got it, but then it also gives it for them of yes, it’s there.

Megan Porta  28:02

Wow. So a lot can go into this, a lot of forethought and research. Do you have any other tips for people just getting started with this rabbit hole? I mean, venture,

Kathy Berget 28:13

Well, I think it’s important to go and look, but not to obsess over it. Yeah, and then decide how you’re wanting to do it, if it’s a larger company, and sometimes I’ll see this in different Facebook groups with food bloggers, where they’re like, I can’t believe I just found this. And not knowing what to do is the hardest way to go about this. And so Pixsy will they have even an onboarding call you can have. You can try this out to see if it works, or check out another agency or company and see if that works for you. A couple of things you can do as well is, I always add watermark to my photos, and that does not increase the value at all. But if a company takes your watermark off or alters it or covers it, it has just increased that value of that photo, which is amazing. And Pixsy asks that once you have filed a case, that you don’t have contact with the company, unless they reach out to you and say, Is Pixsy really representing you? Because there’s so many scammers out there. Yeah, some people just need to verify that, and so I always respond back, yes, they’re a company that’s helping me go after companies that are using my photos without images. And some of the emails that I get from companies are just amazing, because they think that our our value of our photos is worth nothing. And sometimes they’ll just go on and on like, Are you kidding me? $1,200 for this picture of eggs? That is ridiculous. And I just feel like, well, let’s see, I bought the food, I made the food, I styled the food. I bought the camera equipment. I, you know, shot the picture, I edited the picture, and all you did was copy and paste 

Megan Porta  29:53

And not to mention, like, taking courses to hone your photography skills and all of the years of skill building that that okay, yeah, I’m getting riled up now too.

Megan Porta  30:05

Oh, I know we’re not going to go there, but, yeah, I think you can visit it, but don’t stay there. Don’t stay in that negative place. Yeah, and you know, the other the other point, it’s like, if you think that photography is that easy, you could have just gone and taken your own picture. Do we need to just takes. Take mine too. And then if, for some reason, I think, with your filing case with Pixsy, you want to do your due diligence to make certain that you’ve really looked at it, that it’s a legitimate case you want to file. Because if you decide to cancel that case, Pixie could charge you, depending on how much time and resources they’ve already invested in it. So you want to be really careful there, and I’ve only ever considered one time dropping a case, and it was just recently, and it was somebody had from a restaurant, had contacted me via Facebook Messenger or Instagram messenger. I used to the same thing and was verifying that I had, was using Pixsy and her sob story just kept going and going and going and going, and even though I wasn’t interacting with her, she kept sending me things. And I didn’t know, I’m just learning. We’re a startup. We’re barely making it. This would bankrupt us. I’m a single mom. I might Oh my god. And I’m like, That’s exactly what I was feeling. So I was just like, oh man, do I really want to be the causes losing their job? Well, I went back in and looked at that web page, and they had taken my image down. And so for this particular one, it was on their entire menu was up on their web page, and it had photos of each one. But then as I started looking at the other images that they had for all the other items on their menu, I started just looking at those and like, okay, these are not their own images. They all had their own. They all looked different in style. So I did a reverse Google search on those, and of course, they came back to other sources than their own, so they didn’t take them. So I thought, You know what? She hasn’t learned anything, right? I’m not going to be the cause of her demise just because it’s my image, but you have to be careful.

Megan Porta  32:01

Yeah, that’s the thing, is that you never know who’s on the other side. Like it could be someone totally innocent having no clue they just Google. They have no knowledge about the fact that you can’t steal images. Or it could be someone who’s really deep into scamming and pulling the wool over your eyes, like you just never know who’s on the other side.

Kathy Berget 32:21

You’re totally true on that, yeah. And I will also get a lot of people that will contact me and say it was a college intern and they didn’t know any better, so they always deflect the blame, but they’re often the ones who have removed that watermark, so I think they probably do more know more than the than the average person, because that’s their life. Is this whole online world anyway.

Megan Porta  32:42

I have a question about the watermark. So I noticed that you put your watermark at the very bottom right, so it’s pretty small. Now, if somebody takes your image and then just crops that off, can they still can the value of whatever they have to pay go up for that?

Kathy Berget 32:56

Because they’ve removed the rock the watermark. Okay, yeah. So I’ve had them blurred it out. I’ve had them put something else on top of it, or an overlay. All those things are removing the watermark. Yeah,

Megan Porta  33:06

is there anything else we need to know? Kathy, I feel like this gives us a really good picture of where to start and kind of what to do. But what are we missing? 

Kathy Berget  33:14

Yeah, I think it’s really good to just be aware of and go and look, and just because it’s happening to me and to other bloggers doesn’t mean it’s happening to everyone, but know what you need to do if it is happening, and where to go. And I’m happy to help anybody. If they’re having questions about it or not even sure where to get started, they can always reach out and let me know, and I’ll be happy to help them with that. I just think like you were active in going after people that were copying your Pinterest images and redirecting them to different sites. To me, it’s the same thing. It’s like, one little bite at a time makes a difference. And so I think we just have to work our way down it. Yeah,

Megan Porta  33:50

yep. And it can be overwhelming, especially if you’ve been doing this for a long time like you have, but yeah, I like the one bite at a time analogy, just just little bites, and you’re going to make a difference. And I also like what you said earlier about not getting obsessed, because it’s very easy to do that, so keep that in mind too, right? Well, thank you, Kathy, this was super valuable. I think this will be a good resource episode for a lot of people who run across this in their blogging careers. So we really appreciate you 

Kathy Berget  34:19

Absolutely. I hope it’s helpful to others. 

Megan Porta  34:21

Yes, I know it’s going to be do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today? 

Kathy Berget  34:27

Yes. So I went and searched for something specifically on staying positive, because I think that’s really important, especially after we’ve maybe been in a negative space with looking for this stolen images. And so I found a quote from Dennis S. Brown, who’s a motivational speaker, and it says the only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude. So at the end of this, you have to just decide, I’m done with that and it’s not going to affect the rest of my day. It’s going to be a good day.

Megan Porta  34:53

Oh, I love it. That’s so perfect. Okay, we’re going to put together show notes for you. Kathy, I was just trying to figure out. The name of those because you’ve been on before. So if you want to peek at the show notes, we’ll put all the resources we talked about in this interview inside the show notes. You can go to eatblogtalk.com/beyondthechickencoop2. So tell everyone where they can find you if they do want to reach out, if they have issues that they want to run by you, where can they find you?

Kathy Berget  35:18

Yeah. So my website is beyondthechickencoop.com and you can email me directly at Kathy – with a k – @beyondthechicancoop.com and that’s also can be found on the website. And then my social media is all beyond the chicken coop.

Megan Porta  35:32

Great. Well, thanks again, Kathy, and thank you for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time.

Kathy Berget  35:36

Thank you. Megan, bye.

Outro  35:41

If you enjoyed this topic, you’ll also love the episode I recommend in the show notes. Click on the episode description to find the link. Thank you, and I will see you next time you.