150 cherished memories:pimp

I appreciate your comment.

There are obviously 3 different typeas of people that are registering domains:

1) SEO/Freesite builder: The guy that wants an edge to get a good SE placement so he can make sales with us. I have no problems with this guy, if he's willing to follow a few rules (like i listed above).

2) Typo squatter: The guy that wants to take advantage of typos and make money for doing nothing. I think that an affiliate should be paid for the amount of work and resources he invests into promoting us. The typo squatter isn't bringing anything to the table AT ALL. No work should equal no money.

3) SE Spammer/Cybersquatter: The guy that wants to take advantage of popular names to get SE traffic to his own site which isn't promoting us AT ALL: This is the guy that is fucking it up for everyone.

And borked, what are you, like 12?

I fully agree to point 1 & 3.

Point 2. I do see different though.

Here's my take: As you think typo-squatters are bringing nothing to the table AT ALL.

I say they do bring in sales. Why?

Not every surfer realizes that he typed the domain wrong and will try again. In this case, which is highly possible you just lost a sale.
If the "Typo squatter" registered this domain though, you've just made your % share of a sale you would have otherwise had lost.

Basicly it boils down to this question:

If you get let's say 50 new signups from affiliate-typos, but you only get 10 signups from people that really do try again and get it right... what would you rather have?

To the whole situation itself:

The real easy and working solution to this dilemma is: Allow affiliates to have alike domains, as long as they bring YOU the sales. Go after the ones that abuse your brands to drive traffic to other sites. By doing this, you will have MANY affiliates let you know when they find a bad apple automaticly - because they fuck with their dedication as well then... Don't "over-control" the situation too much... this is confusing and wasting time that you could use much better for other things.


cheers,
Steve / JOKER

bump for a reply to this

I'm sure this all does look like "over control" to you. But in almost 8 years in the biz, I've felt cheated by domainers more than any other group. I don't have the manpower to police every site for compliance. When I noticed so many people cheating us (#3 above) -- my answer was to stop allowing anyone to register our names.

Once I told a few people they couldn't use our names, how do you expect me to now allow it without people like Brujah throwing a fit? I want one rule for everyone. That is fair. If people didn't cheat and take every single advantage, I wouldn't be arguing these issues now.

It boils down to TRUST. If I've met you and know you, I'm more likely to trust you not to abuse our trade names. A few years ago, I made deals with people that had our domains. They all agreed not to promote any other sponsors. But they all did, eventually. Every single one of them. Kinda made me not trust anyone that plays domain games.

If people want me to be honest with them, then I expect the same in return. Do you really think I should allow an affiliate to register domains like tawnee-stone-official-site.com ?

id like to thank borked for bringing this topic up because i registered a tld with a ls model name and didn't know it was such a big deal because i had done it before with other affiliate programs and have found no problems. As a relatively newbie webmaster i just patiently viewed these threads and responses for an answer of what i should do with my site and now i have come to the conclusion that i can use this domain under the new guidelines steve has outline, is this correct? If this is true, i also like to thank lightspeedsteve for trying to find a compromise to this situation so we all can make money.
This domain will be purely promoting LS content and i will be doing it in respected manner.

have a nice night

Ok, SEO gurus: Please explain to me WHY google doesn't return TAWNEESTONE.COM as the most relevant result for "Tawnee Stone" searches? If they did, I wouldn't give a flying fuck about all these typos and other domains.

OK, fair enough....guess I shouldnt scrutinize so much, as I dont play the 'domain games'... but it is your intellectual property, and apparantly the webmasters who are being honest wont be the subject of prosecution... I understand that.

thanks for replying Steve

Ok, point taken and understood.

My POV... Compare both situations and decide:

1.:
Allow your affiliates to have alike domains: Get sales thru their work and dedication, plus get notice most of the time an affiliate of yours finds a "bad apple" abusing this - eases your 'manpower problem'.

2.: Disallow alike domains completely: Lose sales, nobody but you and your close friends watching out for the "bad apples" - adds to your 'manpower problem'.


Basicly:

Gain Sales and help of affiliates
vs.
Lose Sales and get disgruntled affiliates


This is nothing more than one rule: Work with / for LightSpeed, or be against LightSpeed.

Even George Bush could pull that off with terrorism (be against it, or you're against US!), then you can do that as well :winkwink:

Feeling cheated sucks, but with good affiliates on your side you can fight the bad ones better than alone, agreed?
Think optimistic, it's so much more productive than being pessimistic :2 cents:


Steve

I think it's fair too. One rule or TOS that applies to everyone. :2 cents:
I even posted something similiar to your rules in the "Lightspeed domain policy" thread.

Because others are better at flirting with google :upsidedow

No, seriously... if this really bothers you so much, I'm sure one of the better, resident SEO-consultants / SEO-Experts can help you with this and fix it for / with you.

Tawneestone.com has poor pagerank.
tawneestone.com PR 1

It is in desperate need of better back links.

The #1 for me in google for tawneestone.com was RabbitsReviews
RabbitsReviews has PR 5 and likely it's backlinks are infinitely better.

It might just be the linking structure for affiliates, or just needs a little SEO work.

It's great to see though that finally this thread has manged to wake up Steve to changing his policy. :thumbsup

Still no explanation as to why, as the current policy stands/stood, some affiliates were allowed to promote LSM with typos et al. when other, newer sites were squashed from the off.

Even the new policies wouldn't work - just look at http://www.jordancarpi.com/ - lots of external links there, yet clearly the site is promoting Jordan Capri. Given it's high Google ranking, higher than the real site, this affiliate has been allowed to proceed for some time with a typo. Yet jordancapritape.com, which was registered with the sole intention of promoting Steve's new marketing strategy was come down on heavily.

Fuck, flawed logic - A Google search for "Tawnee Stone": I don't know where the official page comes because I gave up at page 5, but in all those pages (1-4) ONLY 1 domain used a tawneestone derivative as the domain name. The rest were simple affiliates with their domains that had FA to do with tawneestone.

:error

Steve, using your example of your trademarked name, Tawnee Stone, as your example of search engine dilution due to people abusing your TM is really fucking wrong!

I ain't searching any more, but in 22 pages of Google for a search of "Tawnee Stone", there is 1 typo squatter, and someone using tawneestoneblog.com. And YET tawneestone.com STILL hasn't been listed. Tawneestone.net got listed somewhere between pages 10-20

That isn't search engine dilution, that's just really poor SEO.

Poor SEO my ASS! We use the EXACT same techniques as our other names, like "Jordan Capri". I think SE spammers did something back in the day to fuck Tawneestone.com up with Google.

Anyway, don't take too much credit for getting me to look into these issues. Maybe if you would have started by contacting me first, (instead of starting a thread on GFY about how everyone can do whatever they please with our names), it wouldn't have taken so long to make progress?

Steve Lightspeed

I think you simply pissed Google off mate:
--edit, maybe the fault of others, who will know.

No, people tried that but it didn't work. Plus that would have only worked for a single affiliate, not a pan-implementation.

Market Leap's Link Popularity Check ranked it the lowest possible "Limited Presence" for TawneeStone.com
http://www.marketleap.com/

It could use some real SEO work. It seems justified, and not due to penalty or caused by any SE spammer.

Represant!

http://djfab12.skyblog.com/pics/493224059_small.jpg

Alright, Steve. I'd just like to say a few things and keep it a civilized as possible.

First of all, I do not question your success. I know you're big and I have great respect for everything you've done. I lost a bit of that when you came down hard on my two domains jordancapritape.com and thejordancapritape.com.

Honestly, I created these two domains with the sole purpose of jumping in the cashwagon of the tape. I knew it was going to be a cash cow since the "Is this really Jordan Capri?" thread. I'm new to adult, not to the Internet, and I was happy to see that I was lucky enough to take advantage of such an opportunity so early in the game.

I set up jordancapritape.com to collect email addresses of people who were interested in the tape. I made a quick text design and a submit email box where people could sign up to be the first to know when the tape was going to be released. I also threw in a couple of your FHGs to please the surfer since he was already there.

I went into a big forum and posed as someone interested in the tape, using my respected nickname with over 10K posts. I got around 20 emails in the database the first day and by the third day I had 55 in there. Not bad. 55 people that wanted to buy the tape or expressed interest in it. I thought I was on to something and I was already planning on how to maximize this opportunity, both for you and me, since there really is no way to keep you out of the loop unless I go all pirate on your ass, which you'll see a couple of paragraphs down why it wasn't an option.

Then I come in here and I get slammed by you saying that I couldn't use those TLDs because you had a trademark on them. I saw no logic in this because, as it has already been mentioned, a JC TLD is worthless if you don't push JC. I think that the fucktard running tawnee--stone.org needs to buy a clue. How on Earth can you think that surfers interested in Tawnee Stone also have an interest in fetish stuff? It just doesn't make any sense at all.

At this point, it was clear to me that I didn't want to be involved with you or your company. FYI, I used to work remotely for a sponsor until I found out that they had a shady past that went completely against my ethics and values, so I quit. I lasted two weeks there and it didn't matter that things had changed in there to go the correct way. It was clear money had been made the wrong way. That's how strong I believe in my ethical system.

So, I briefly searched the USPTO and saw that you had something for Jordan Capri, but I didn't notice that it had not even been assigned to a lawyer for review, yet alone the dispute part (you're going to have a hard time if that dude's step-sister or whatever has the same legal name). So I, not knowing about US trademark laws, acted in good faith and almost sold you the domains for their registration value until borked came along and said that you didn't have a trademark for it.

At this point I was just plain ol' (and still am) pissed off, especially since Brujah had put his money where his mouth was and showed me the excessive amount of affiliates that were using typos and the JC name in their TLDs. It was pretty clear you were not enforcing this, yet you would not let me use my domains for the sole purpose of making me and you some money. Hell, it was crystal clear that you were making exceptions and the fact that I wasn't in the same bag, considering that I didn't do anything wrong, pissed me off even more.

I really did not want to deal with this kind of crap and I gave away the domains to borked to use as he pleased, but hoping that he had the time to do something with them that annoyed the hell out of you.

I did not appreciate the fact that you claimed a trademark you didn't have, you pushed me around, and you had this police-like behavior, when it was clear that exceptions were being made. Furthermore, when I consulted my lawyer, he said that my legal contract begins were the "Affiliate Terms & Conditions" is in the ToS. Anything before that is just a note and does not have significant legal power, at least not in the country I live in. The fact that it is written in a different font size than the rest of the legal contract doesn't help either and that's one of the reasons I missed it when I printed out and read the whole thing looking for a clause that specified the domains.

That being said, I'd like to move into a different subject, which is the reason why you don't want affiliates using JC TLDs.

It has already been said that it has poor SEO and they're absolutely right. Second of all, affiliates don't need a TLD with the girl's name in it to rank higher than girlsname.com. There are plenty of examples of this.

I really do agree with one of the things you said, which is what I'd personally do. Why waste money, resources and time going after webmasters that are making you money? I think your finder's fee idea is more than adequate to handle this situation. In fact, I'm not even sure you would even have to pay people to submit questionable sites. I own three vBulletin licenses and every single time I find a board running a pirate version of their software, I go into my vB members area and submit the pirate link for free. If you make it accessible enough, I'm sure a lot of people would be willing to submit this kind of information. Proof of this is the huge amount of threads on GFY that question several aspects of websites and sponsors as soon as they see them.

In the end, Steve, it's your business and you handle it however you please, but keep in mind that you have very open minded competitors and webmasters have a lot of options and this is the kind of stuff that pisses off the ants that make you money.

:2 cents:

Before the spell check police comes in questioning my reasoning solely because of my spelling, kindly note that English is not my first language.

steve this is exactly the problem
you are trying to own a name
you want them to ONLY promote you when your own actions allow them to make money by promoting you directly

their are sites (because of your lightspeed plugin) who feature "your" girls who offer persignup of $35 on a 4.95 trial (see sig)

you would indirectly benefit from such a traffic direction because the plugin is not going to fully satisfy everyone and those that are not satisfied will signup for the site.

search engine optimization is hard work it does not happen by magic even if you have the keyword in the domain.

your hardball stance creates a situation where these people have two choices

they can link to you and give you evidence that you will use to take their domain away from them.


or

optimize and not link to you at all.


your surprised that they choose option b.


BTW the fact that they choose option b is part of the reason your search engine ranking for your domains is so low. youdon't even use alt tags properly or keyword stuff image names on your site. Your search engine ranking is completely dependent on pr rank and your desire to own a real world name causes these highly optimized sites NOT link to you.

sorry gfy does not have a spelling checker, i have never claimed to be an expert speller.

I have had a dispute with steve about a domain name. At the time steve had a "registered trademark" for raimi miller with no limitation of scope and i knew that to get such a trademark would have cost him between 50k and 100k to get assuming he didn't spend one dime paying off all the real world "raimi miller"s to get them to sign the consent forms.


I picked up raimimiller.com in a drop and paid more than standard registration for it, steve contacted me an demanded the domain for free. I calmly pointed out the multiple mistakes he had made would legally prevent him from taking the domain away from me even though he had (what i believed at the time) was an iron clad trademark.

I made multiple offers which would put the domain the model who plays "raimi miller" for steve with the end game desire to build good will with that model so that when she quit lightspeed i could make money in the future (good will translates into a potential business relationship -- ie model booking work, another site etc)

We finally agreed to give him the domain for free if he would turn over all the docs from his registration of his trademark to me. I knew that his trademark could stop me and he had only made 3 mistakes out 155 i know of that would have the same effect. If steve had given me the docs i could have made up an informational packet documenting how much money he spend, how much effort he went thru and spell out how because of a simple miss wording in his TOS and his content liciencing agreements turned his %XXX,XXX.XX trademark into a worthless piece of paper.

I could have made a lot of money selling the services to find those flaws even if i offer it on a contigency basis (you only pay if we find the flaws).

Steve sent me a one page email statement that he had done a valid trademark (with no proof, no bill, no docs etc) and when i asked him for the docs he backed out of our deal and went into his tirade about suing me.

I think he expected me to back down and come crawling back to him like a little bitch and give him the domain name. Instead i talked to my lawyer who researched steve's trademark in preparation for the threatened lawsuit.

I spent a good deal of my money doing the research that steve was supposed to do for a trademark of the scope he had registered and found that stevie boy had not done one single bit of it.


Hell he hadn't done it in his own state.

Likely because the LS affiliate links point to sub domains (ie. main.insertsitehere.com/affiliateinfo).

Who wants to register JordanCapriSucks.com? You can a) point it to one of her blowjob galleries and send Steve traffic and probably get a C&D or b) you can make a parody of Jordan Capri and still get a C&D, but then laugh when it goes to court and you keep the domain. :thumbsup

exactly.

It still looks to me like my flippant "control freak" remark holds water as there is still a tight grip around the use of LSM names, registered TMs or not. Yet LSM appears to me to be the only one that takes this strong stance. It sure would be nice to hear other promoters' ideas on their policy on their names. One did already contact me explaining that (in their case) they would like to control it, but the revenue from affiliates outweighed the nuisance of abusers.

I do kinda like "new rule" #4 tho':

Fuck, that's a diamond! :thumbsup

who is that rule from

It's from Steve.