Comments on: Someone Ripping Off Your Affiliate Site?

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:06:42 +0000

I had the same thing happen to me. I was able to use the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) by contacting their host to get their site shut down. Followed them to the next host and had it shut down again. Hope this helps. You do have rights but its difficult. Thanks to Rosalind Gardner for the tip on DMCA.

By: Walter

Walter — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:51:22 +0000

Just out of curiosity, Amit – did you suffer a significant drop in revenue, ROI or traffic when this copycat came along? I recall an acquaintance of mine that was moving their bricks-and-mortar retail business to new larger, posher premises half a block farther down the street. Rather than move the shop, they elected to set up the new shop while keeping the old shop open in the old location. For a month or two they had both stores running — and to their great surprise the business volume in the old shop continued unchanged even though the new “competitor” was open farther down the street. They joked that they could have kept both locations open and made twice as much money!

By: Work Plus Faith

Work Plus Faith — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:52:13 +0000

@Jimmy: I totally get where you are coming from. But, copying a style of can is different from copying Red Bulls Logo, slogan, etc.,. Plus, Red Bull would take the crook to court instead of reporting them to the FTC.

I have no problem with copying a style or using a successful competitors approach as your own, but flat out taking someone else’s design is another issue, imo.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:16:58 +0000

Go tell your affiliate manager? Are you serious?

Grow up, that’s competition.

If you don’t have any other competitve advantages in your processes your dead in the water anyways.

Do you think that Red Bull went crying to the FTC when competitors started copying everything down to their can style?

By: Yuwie money

Yuwie money — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:20:55 +0000

Hey!

Make money online with Yuwie!

Please visit my website!

Thanks a lot!

By: Stephan Miller

Stephan Miller — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:08:35 +0000

A whole slew of software is dedicated to doing this. And sites like KeywordSpy thrive on copycats. The way I see it is I am always moving forward. Whatever they copycat is old news.

By: Googlelady

Googlelady — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:41:46 +0000

Giovanna, I totally agree with you. That’s why some times I hate that. Amit, even if you have a system if that lazy affiliate catch you again (and they will) they will copy again and again. If you see in another perspective they are masters in copying and finding the way to be more profitable just copying your work. Getting at top of the SERPS is the way to go and then let them copy you and see if search engines (Specially Google) will slap in their…

By: Giovanna

Giovanna — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:28:54 +0000

It’s really messed up that people do that. One of the best ways to combat thieves is to rank my sites on the SERPS. If they steal others’ work on the organics, they will definitely get nuked for duplicated content especially if they steal from sites of authority. Besides, people that steal don’t survive doing SEO because it’s competitive and it takes some creativity to get certain sites to rank.

By: Juice

Juice — Thu, 15 May 2008 05:59:55 +0000

Weak, lazy, no creativity, affiliates…

By: tyler dewitt

tyler dewitt — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:35:00 +0000

interesting what niche?

haha