The Reputational Risk of Using a Competitor’s Paid Research
What the "Make Writing Your Job" allegations teach us about risk, ethics, and responses
When does subscribing to a competitor’s newsletter constitute legitimate market research, and when does it become an undisclosed sourcing mechanism for a rival product?
That’s the question at the center of a current dispute involving three newsletters that curate paid opportunities for writers.
One newsletter operator says an account associated with a competitor clicked 10,233 of its links in less than a year (the next-most-active subscriber clicked <1,000 total during the same period).
A high number of clicks does not, by itself, prove that material was copied, nor does the appearance of the same publicly available opportunity in two newsletters. However, the allegations in this case go beyond ordinary overlap, raising questions about repeated access to competitors’ paid products, the use of privately submitted opportunities, attempts to regain access after accounts were blocked, and whether one service relied on other curators’ work while presenting its output as its own. Those questions create a serious reputational problem.
The allegations
Melissa Tripp of Remote Writing Jobs (RWJ) published an account of her interactions with the founders of Make Writing Your Job (MWYJ). Tripp alleges that people associated with MWYJ paid to access her newsletter and later used opportunities found through RWJ as material for their own competing publication. She says she recognized listings on MWYJ that had entered her own submission process. She also says that one section of MWYJ had previously been labelled “Remote Writing Jobs”, the name of her established business. According to Tripp, she eventually blocked the relevant accounts and payment method because she no longer wanted her paid research to feed a direct competitor.
Subsequently, George of The Freelance Writing Network (FWN) posted a detailed account of activity he said he had identified through his subscriber analytics. George says one paid account, connected to an MWYJ co-founder through its email address, clicked approximately 930 curated links a month for almost a year. In total, he says, the account clicked 10,233 links. George says he subsequently blocked several accounts associated with the business. He also reports that FWN subscribers noticed opportunities appearing on MWYJ shortly after FWN had featured them. Some of those opportunities, he says, had been submitted directly to FWN and had not been posted publicly elsewhere.
Both writers place limits around what they claim to know. FWN explicitly says it is not alleging copyright infringement; Tripp says she cannot know the founders’ intentions and doesn’t claim that every opportunity published by MWYJ originated with her.
At the time of writing, the accounts published by RWJ and FWN remain allegations, and MWYJ has not provided a substantive public response.
The real value is not the links
It may be tempting to dismiss the dispute by saying that nobody owns a link. That is true, but it’s incomplete. Job vacancies and calls for applications are often publicly available, so several newsletters operating in the same field will inevitably identify some of the same opportunities; however, the value of the product these businesses sell lies in the work they do to find, assess, categorise, and present the opportunities, including:
Searching numerous websites and databases
Rejecting misleading or poor-quality listings
Checking deadlines and eligibility requirements
Assessing rates and conditions
Identifying unusual or easily missed opportunities
Processing direct submissions
Deciding what a particular audience is likely to value
Presenting the results in a useful and trusted format
Subscribers pay because someone else (someone they trust) is performing that research and exercising judgment for them; the curation is the product.
Competitive research has limits
Monitoring competitors is a normal business practice and paying for a rival’s product to understand its format, pricing, positioning, or customer experience can be legitimate competitive intelligence. Businesses regularly study one another, and occasionally discovering an opportunity through another curator isn’t necessarily improper, particularly when the original public source is independently checked and the discovery is credited, where appropriate.
The ethical position changes if a business repeatedly and systematically uses a competitor’s paid output as a sourcing feed for its own competing product. If the allegations in this case are substantiated, the concern is that it benefited from another curator’s paid research at scale, without disclosure, while building trust in the apparent independence of its own curation.
That risk becomes more serious where the material includes direct or exclusive submissions that would not otherwise have been publicly discoverable, and more so again where accounts attempted to regain access after the original accounts or payment methods had been blocked.
And in this case, the claimed volume, timing, less-obvious matches shared, private submissions shared, and repeated access create a pattern that requires a credible explanation.
Why a legalistic defense would fail
MWYJ may be tempted to respond narrowly and legalistically, ie., the vacancies were public, nobody owns the links, publishing the same opportunity is not theft, etc. That would address a copyright claim that the two writers have carefully avoided making and disregard the ethical issue they have raised.
The reputational question is whether MWYJ relied on competitors’ paid judgement and research while allowing subscribers to believe that its own team had independently found and vetted the material.
Professional communications codes offer useful benchmarks even when the organisations involved are not members of the relevant professional bodies. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations code of conduct requires integrity and honest, fair dealing with fellow professionals and the public, and the International Association of Business Communicators code of ethics says that communicators should be honest, correct errors promptly, give credit for others’ work, and cite sources. Those principles point to the same basic expectation: that a business that profits from organizing and sharing information should be transparent about where that information comes from.
There may also be legal questions involving subscription terms, confidential submissions or database rights. In the UK, database protection can arise in some circumstances where substantial investment has been made in obtaining, verifying or presenting data under sui generis database rights.
Whether any such rights apply here would depend on the detailed facts and would require specialist legal advice. However, the reputational issue does not depend on proving a legal violation, as a practice can damage trust even where its precise legal classification remains uncertain.
The reputational exposure
MWYJ has ~43K subscribers and promises high-quality opportunities, exclusive resources, and frequently curated job lists. That proposition depends on confidence in its selection process. Subscribers need to believe that the opportunities have been responsibly sourced and vetted, and contributors need to believe that material they submit will be handled appropriately. Partners need to believe that the business is a safe organisation with which to associate. Once doubts arise about how the listings were obtained, those doubts attach to the product itself. Subscribers may question what they are paying for. Some may cancel or request refunds. Contributors may become reluctant to send opportunities directly. Commercial partners may reconsider their involvement.
The organisation may also be asked to demonstrate who sourced each listing, when it was found, where it came from and under what terms it was used. A lack of records would create an additional problem. Even where listings were found independently, an inability to prove their provenance would make it difficult to rebut the allegation.
The issue may also expose weaknesses in training, oversight and incentives. A system that rewards volume and speed while failing to require sourcing records creates predictable risk. It is possible, for example, that a staff member or contractor used a competitor’s publication without the founders’ knowledge; however, that would not automatically remove leadership responsibility.
MWYJ would still need to explain:
What researchers had been instructed to do
Whether provenance records were required
How sourcing practices were supervised
Whether publication targets encouraged taking shortcuts
What controls existed to prevent inappropriate use of competitors’ paid material
Leaders often treat a public call-out as a communications problem, but the most serious reputational damage usually stems from the operational questions it exposes.
The asymmetry aspect
There’s also an asymmetry problem, as a larger business is alleged to have benefited from the research of smaller creators while receiving greater visibility and commercial rewards. Audiences are particularly sensitive to unfairness when invisible labor is involved, especially the audiences of these newsletters, because freelancers already work in an environment where ideas, contacts, and research can be detached from the person who produced them. They’re familiar with this type of thing, and many will have been negatively impacted by it themselves. So the allegation lands in this context; it resonates as a story about power that will be extremely familiar to these two newsletters’ audiences and the audience of MWYJ, who may feel like they have been exploited by the higher-paid service built on the work of other creators they’re not paying. That audience will want to know whether MWYJ understands why the alleged behavior feels exploitative.
Subscribers may also feel implicated. If they believe the service they funded was partly built on the work of other creators whom they were not supporting, they may feel that their trust was used to sustain an unfair model.
Thus, any response from MWYJ must show that its authors understand why the alleged conduct feels exploitative.
What MWYJ should say now
At the time of writing, MWYJ has not issued a substantive public response to the allegations. Its most recent job board post is dated July 10. It is reasonable for an organisation to take time to establish the facts; however, “we need time to investigate” does not require complete silence, and at this stage, the correct initial response would usually be a short holding statement that:
Acknowledges the concern
Confirms what is being reviewed
Identifies any immediate containment measure
States that the affected creators are being contacted
Promises a further update by a specific date
For example:
We are aware of the concerns raised by Remote Writing Jobs and The Freelance Writing Network about our sourcing practices. We take these concerns seriously and have paused our sourcing workflows while we review access records, contributor instructions, and the provenance of published listings. We are also contacting the creators directly and will provide a substantive update by [date].
This statement would not admit facts that had not yet been established; however, it would demonstrate that the organization recognises the seriousness of the issue and has begun taking action.
MWYJ should also pause scheduled promotional content related to the disputed product while the allegations are under investigation. Continuing to market the service without acknowledging the controversy would create the impression that commercial activity takes priority over accountability.
What the investigation must establish
The investigation should begin by preserving records, including subscriber-access data, internal messages, research documents, publishing logs, contractor instructions, payment information, and any records showing how disputed listings entered the workflow. The central question is provenance.
For each disputed opportunity, MWYJ should determine:
Where it was first discovered
Who discovered it
When it entered the system
Whether the public source was checked independently
Whether it had appeared in a competitor’s paid publication first
Whether it came from a direct or exclusive submission
What internal records support the account being given
The review should also identify which competing publications were accessed, by whom and for what purpose, and establish what happened after any relevant accounts were blocked. If further accounts or payment methods were used, it must be determined who authorised or knew about that activity.
Employee and contractor instructions require particular scrutiny, as researchers may have been explicitly told to monitor competitors, may have misinterpreted vague instructions, or may have been pressured to meet unrealistic volume targets without a clear sourcing policy. A policy can encourage misconduct without explicitly instructing anyone to behave unethically. MWYJ should also examine the incentives behind the workflow. A target requiring more than 30 new opportunities at a high frequency may encourage researchers to prioritise speed over provenance.
Finally, the organisation must compare its actual practices with what it told subscribers, contributors and partners. The reputational consequences will be more serious if MWYJ represented its listings as independently researched, exclusively sourced, or individually vetted when its records cannot support those claims.
Legal and communications advisers should work together during the investigation, as legal caution is necessary, but it should not result in a statement that answers only the narrowest possible legal question while ignoring all the ethical ones.
The response must follow the evidence
The eventual public response should match what the investigation finds. If the allegations are substantially confirmed, MWYJ should stop the practice, contact the affected creators and discuss an appropriate remedy. Depending on the evidence, that remedy might include compensation, attribution, removal of affected listings, corrections to previous claims, or even a formal licensing or collaboration arrangement.
Any remedy should be discussed privately with the affected creators before it is announced, and it should not be made conditional on silence. Attempting to purchase confidentiality after a public dispute about business ethics risks creating a second ethical controversy.
The public response should explain:
What happened
When it happened
Who was affected
How the organisation benefited
Why its controls failed
What immediate action has been taken
What will change permanently
It should acknowledge the affected creators’ work in their own terms and should not recast the dispute as a misunderstanding about the ownership of public links.
If the findings are mixed, MWYJ should avoid using one disproved detail to claim complete exoneration. It may find that many listings were sourced independently, while others resulted from unauthorized access to competitors’ paid products; in that case, it can correct inaccurate claims while still accepting responsibility for the conduct that did occur. “Not every listing came from a competitor” would not answer evidence that some did, and a credible response distinguishes between what is false, what is true and what cannot be established.
If the allegations are false, a denial will need supporting evidence. Screenshots, click data, and two detailed first-person accounts have already shaped the public narrative, so a general statement that the allegations are untrue is unlikely to displace that narrative. MWYJ would need to show provenance records, publication timestamps, sourcing logs, and other credible evidence to demonstrate that the relevant opportunities were found independently. Evidence is particularly important whenever an individual organization asks audiences to reject a detailed and apparently corroborated account.
The responses to avoid
Several possible responses would make the situation worse. “We cannot steal something that is public” would answer an allegation the complainants have not made and signal that the organisation does not understand the economic value of curation. “Content may have been sourced in ways that didn’t meet our standards” would obscure who acted, what occurred and who was responsible. “We’re sorry if anyone felt their work was used” would turn a question about conduct into a question about the complainants’ feelings. Passive and conditional apologies don’t satisfy audiences seeking accountability.
Scapegoating a contractor would also be dangerous unless the evidence clearly supports an isolated breach. If leadership imposed unrealistic volume targets, failed to require provenance or tolerated the use of competitors as a routine source, blaming a contractor would appear to be an attempt to outsource responsibility.
A private settlement alone would not repair the wider damage either. The allegation is public, and subscribers have a legitimate interest in knowing how the product they paid for was produced. Private engagement with the affected creators is essential, but it must be followed by an appropriate public account.
Rebuilding trust
A statement would be only the beginning. To rebuild trust, MWYJ would need a written sourcing standard that distinguishes between:
Original research
Direct submissions
Publicly available aggregators
Leads discovered through third parties
Material appearing in competing paid publications
Every listing should have an internal provenance record and publication timestamp, and researchers should be prohibited from using a direct competitor’s paid product as a routine sourcing feed unless an explicit licence or collaboration agreement allows it. Furthermore, direct and exclusive submissions should be marked and protected. All staff and contractors should receive training on the sourcing policy, and managers should audit a sample of listings rather than assume that the policy is being followed Where another curator genuinely contributed to the discovery, the organization should apply a consistent attribution rule.
Leadership should also reconsider the commercial promises driving the workflow. If the team can’t ethically find and verify the number of opportunities it has promised at the frequency advertised, the proposition itself may need to change. Publishing fewer opportunities, or publishing less frequently, would be better than sustaining volume through practices that can’t withstand scrutiny.
The wider lesson
The issue of whether a business builds value by appropriating another business’s paid judgement while presenting the result as its own applies beyond this newsletter case to any venture that takes scattered information and produces something usable.
If you’re called out, start with the truth. Preserve your records, stop the disputed activity, establish provenance, contact the people affected, say what you know (and don’t) and when you’ll provide an update. Then, match your response with the evidence.
Keep in mind that you can’t communicate your way out of unethical business practices, but you can communicate through them as you develop processes to genuinely remedy the situation and change.