I once saw a bunch of text of my site loaded in another site via RSS. But they weren't showing the text. So the were just showing it to the Search Engines. So i called the company to get rid of my text and so they did.

That's what i think is the best solution to prevent it. Get in contact with the guys who stole your content. Most of them will remove the text they stole from you…

To answer your question though, they are making tons of cash. One I follow closely makes hundreds of thousands per year. However, he is the exception, not the rule. It is like any other usiness. You have a lot of failures, a few people that do well and some who get rich.

For every "six figure blogger" there's probably a similar scraper the same as for every failed blogger there is a similar spammer.

Of course, I'm talking on percentages here, not actual numbers.

The point is, some make a lot of money, others make very little. It's just like everything else in the world.

Unlike a lot of people, I actually approve the pingbacks/trackbacks. Or at least I did until google decided to bestow upon me the gift of Page Rank (cue trumpets).

I use the RSS Footer Word Press plugin on my RSS feeds so that I'm properly attributed, and I figure that if they can actually make money off of what I write more power to them, since I haven't made a dime.

Its one of those problems like gnats in the summer – they're annoying as hell, but for every one you swat there's 10 waiting to replace it.

zohai – why would any blogger not let their readers read their blog through RSS?

But now I've just added a few things to my feed to at least deter them or alert the readers about where the content originally came from. The plugins I use are Copyright Feed and Similar Posts Plugin that adds links to similar posts in the feed.

I will tell you though, that this scraper was even using my partial feeds. It looks really stupid on their site because it says, 'to read the full article…' but it doesn't link, there's no full article to read.

My first reaction was hasty, so I'd recommend taking it in your stride, and being calm. There are things you can do to help, and at the end of the day, you're definitely not alone.