The mummy blog war raging the internet: The Organised Housewife accuses other publication of pinching clicks

UPDATE: The blogger at the centre of a raging internet war has responded to claims that she has been “stealing readers” with an emotional explanation to readers.

A MEGA war has broken out in the world of mummy bloggers with copycat domain names reportedly being snapped up in order to snare clicks from existing successful sites.

Early on Wednesday, Katrina Springer, a Gold Coast Mum who runs the website The Organised Housewife posted a message to her 448,000 Facebook fans warning them of sites that had been set up with similar names to hers.

Post by The Organised Housewife.

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The site at the centre of the allegations, Stay At Home Mum has since responded by posting this video on her Facebook page saying that her only error was in “judging the advice” that she had been given but that she apologised “whole-heartedly” to anyone who was affected.

Post by Stay at Home Mum.

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When Mrs Springer set up her site, The Organised Housewife, four years ago, little did she know how successful it would become. Today it has half-a-million followers.

“I have always kept a clean and tidy home, I love to organise and bake,” Mrs Springer tells news.com.au. “I was often asked for copies of my recipes so I started a blog called The Organised Housewife initially thinking my friends would be the only readers.”

But Mrs Springer’s blog and Facebook page grew rapidly with many other women enjoying her tips and ideas so she purchased the domain name theorganisedhousewife.com.au.

However the domain and hosting fees were pricey so she chose the simple and cheap option and purchased the one domain name. Looking back, this was a huge mistake.

This week Mrs Springer was alerted to the fact that organisedhousewife.com.au was redirecting to a website in competition to hers called Stay At Home Mum. As of this morning this page now redirects to a Wikipedia page.

Mummy blogging has turned into big business but it’s all down to hard work.

“It is very misleading,” says Mrs Springer. “If somebody unknowingly doesn’t type in the word ‘the’ in front of the domain name then they will be redirected to this other site thinking they have landed on The Organised Housewife blog.

“This site has purchased the domain names and many others with the sole intention of gaining traffic from the hard work of others who have built their blogs into brands and businesses over the years. I am so upset in myself that I didn’t think of the big picture clearly in the beginning to protect my business and brand,” she says.

But Mrs Springer is not the only one in this situation.

Kayte Murphy from Woogs World has developed an impressive following.

Popular mummy blogger Kayte Murphy from Woogs World says the practice of high-jacking popular websites URLs by slightly changing them is a common problem.

“When you have accumulated followers organically and through you own credibility, it peeves (you) when you see others trading off others,” she says.

Trevor Long from tech website EFTM says unfortunately the problem is not just a legal one.

“If you own the trademark to your business name that can be aggressively defended at great cost (but) the problem here is ethical – and that is never more clear than in this very case.”

“I have worked really hard writing and sharing all my own ideas. It upsets me that people are trying to take advantage of a brand that I have built and that it is somebody within the Australian blogging community, which is such a supportive group,” says Mrs Springer.

“I urge anybody that is starting a blog or online business to please invest only a few dollars more to purchase all versions of their domain names — .com, .com.au, .net, .net.au, etc.

It’s such a small investment at the time and can save you thousands in legal fees and heartache.”

Stay At Home Mum has so far not responded to news.com.au’s requests for comment.

The blogging community is usually a friendly one, say bloggers.