They say that imitation should be taken as flattery. It certainly helps in the process of validating your idea, however when it comes to original sales and marketing copy on your website turning up on another website – well folks, that’s stealing.
Vincent Lacerte and Yanick Champoux are two Canadian entrepreneurs that over the weekend, were caught out in a rather embarrassing gaffe when they copied large chunks of the Australian founded WP Curve’s website.
WP Curve was founded by Dan Norris and Alex McClafferty, and allows users of wordpress for a cost of between $69.00 – $99.00 a month get unlimited amounts of tweaks made to their websites each month, as well as implement strategies to enhance their presence online.
Lacerte and Champoux failed to check all of their copy properly before setting their new venture WP Experts live to the public and left, of all things the actual copy word for word in the founder section, which clearly explains who Dan Norris is, and not themselves. See below.
The Copy on the WP Experts Team Page
The original copy from the WP Curve team page
Although offering the same services is neither illegal nor is it abnormal in the startup space to have multiple people launching the same types of businesses. Copying large chunks of copy from websites is both stupid and wrong on every level. Aside from that, all credibility goes out the window in an instant.
We should mention that whilst all our efforts to track down exactly where Vincent Lacerte and Yanick Champoux are operating from, kept showing up Canada as a base, it should be noted that on the WP Experts website, it does list 133 Elizabeth Street Sydney and a company called Xone Agency as it’s base – though the postcode does not match up to that area and the website for Xone Agency does not exist.
We reached out to WP Experts for comment on this matter, but at the time of publishing were yet to get a response.
WP Curve is experiencing rapid growth at the moment, currently earning recurring revenue’s of $20,000 per month and by the looks of their reporting are heading fast towards the $30,000 a month mark. The company is completely bootstrapped and has grown through sales only.
WP Curve share their monthly reports publicly with commentary around their growth and goals, you can check out the pretty insightful content here.
WP Experts chose not to copy that part of their website. At least they have some boundaries.
featured image: WP Curve founders Dan Norris and Alex McClafferty
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