Watermarking Your Content
 

I've seen member sites with no watermarks at all.

I've heard arguments such as "Members does not like watermarks".

Personally I think not watermarking your content essentially means giving it away.

What's your thoughts?

Is there any valid reason not to watermark your content?

Watermarks don't bother members as long as they arn't huge and in the way, be smart about it and nobody will care

Exactly right.

I have been in the game for a long time, and never heard a single watermark complaint on our stuff.

:2 cents:

right bottom small one our CMS does it and no complaints ever, make sure the url is there or at least the name of the site if its the same as the url - ive seen some weird watermarks youd never trace back to the site

Who the hell would complain about a small watermark in the corner of a pic or video? I would understand if they had John Clark's watermarks, but thats rarely the case.

why are you not watermarking in the source code? every user can have his downloaded videos and pictures watermarked in source code with some sign, and once you will find some video posted at rapid etc, you will know where it came from ... ? maybe its quite offtopic but at least still about watermarks ;)

If they're not too big and in the right place, there are no problems with watermarks!

Granted, I've never tried that.

What I'm thinking though is that the watermark is more about free advertising then anything else. If someone uploads my photos to rapidshare at least I want people to see where it came from and possibly score some type-ins.

I think a combination would be ideal so that in the case a watermark was cropped out it could still be found in the source code.

Thank you all for your comments :)

what about sites that watermark all content that goes through them? that must be a real sore point for content producers to see their content around the net re-watermarked with someone else's watermark

I think the key is to try to make the watermark as unintrusive as possible