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Affiliate Usage of Domain-Name Marketing Techniques -- NO!

When a merchant develops an affiliate program, sometimes, they are not prepared for what happens next.   Basically, the roll-outs happen like this: 

• First your develop your program, partnering with an affiliate processing company (like BeFree or Commission Junction) and then you start to get sign-ups. 
• The volume of sign-ups has you excited and you start to see a few referred sales.  It's working!
• You find at the end of the first or second payment, some affiliates are doing great!  They have CRAPPY looking sites, but darn, they sure know how to refer sales!
• Your Intellectual Property Monitoring Service calls you.  The top 5 affiliates have all registered domain names which are redirecting to the site. 
• "SO!?" You ask.
• We will shut them down if they do not cease and desist....

On the surface, it may seem innocent, and can't affect you too much, right? Well, Intelluctual property is one of the few assets that have the most value for any company today.  The rights to trademarks, domain names and other company identifiers, whether filed with the USPTO or not, have incredible value.  When an individual registers a mis-spelling of your domain name or other company marks, they are actually violating the law. 

There is also a grey area as to whether misuse of domain names could be considered copyright infringement.

Violating The Law? 

Yep, the Anti-Cyber Squatting Protection Act (ACPA) provides for penalities of fines up to $100,000 per domain found to be in violation of this statute.  Not such a slap on the wrist!  This level of fine isn't found on most "petty crimes," and in fact, one gentleman, found to have tens of thousands of domains he was "squatting," John Zucarelli, was fined $500,000 for five offending domains.  During the period of "appeal" of his case, he regsitered several thousand additional domains, earning between $800,000 to $1,000,000 monthly in referral fees and advertising fees for all of his redirected domains. 

Incredible. Don't let your company find you with your "pants down," openly exposed to these abuses by affiliates, or others. 

There are a few key things you must do: 

• Ensure that the mis-use of your company trademarks is covered in your site terms of use and affiliate agreement. 
• Ensure that you cover 'domain squatting' and the ACPA in your affiliate newsletter from time to time.
• Make it very clear in your affiliate "confirmation" or "approval" email sent following registration as an affiliate that it is completely unacceptable and all violators will be punished to the maximum extent of the law.
• Offer "amnesty periods" to your affiliates to turn in offending domain names which violate any of your policies.
• Include a 'commission repayment policy' in your affiliate agreement, holding them liable for any fraudulently referred sales.

Affiliate programs can be fraught with trouble, but with proper planning and affiliate communication most situations can be resolved.   Often, domain squatters are not affiliates at all.  But keep your eyes open, partner with someone like lonny.paul to monitor your domain name activity. 

You'd be surprised at the violations out there, in fact, Apple doesn't even own appl.com.  Big mistake.  Bet they get TONS of traffic to that domain.

This column was written after speaking with a 'domain name' offender, registering DOMAINNAME-1.com.  When speaking with her, she said 'How do you expect your affiliates to send you sales then?'  Wow.  She really thought this is how you were supposed to do it.  So, I spent the next ten minutes explaining how people build traffic and buy adwords to get referred sales to our site. 

Don't let this happen to your company.  Contact us today.  Continue to research on the trademark and copyright categories @ our founder's website.

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Is your Intellectual Property in Order?

Intellectual property may be among the most valuable assets your company owns. The problem with intellectual property (IP) is that by its nature its intangible. You can't touch it or see it. So how do you know what you have and own?

The starting point is to look to any registrations you may have with the USPTO or other international orgnization. For example, you may have registered a copyright or trademark and have paperwork to prove it. However, the registrations are just the starting point. It turns out that getting a handle on your company's IP assets can be a complex process.  (Note, it is strongly recommended that you utilize the services of a trademark/copyright attorney for all post-filing maintenance, at a minimum. )

Why Bother?
Great- so far I've told you that it's complex and we both know that you have a business to run and a to do list that's a mile long. So, why would you ever take on this project?

Sometimes outsiders force you to dig into your IP assets as a part of their due diligence on your company. This could come up if somebody is buying shares in your company or acquiring some of your IP assets. A bank may require due diligence on your IP before it accepts IP as collateral.

I advise my clients to allow us to do an IP audit for them before anybody asks. This type of self-audit prepares companies for externally conducted due diligence and can enhance their own IP planning and management.

The first time a lawyer audits your IP, it can be time consuming. Usually, I've found that the record keeping is less than pristine and that basic questions lead to lots to head scratching. The time to deal with these issues and get you IP portfolio in order isn't when you need a loan secured by your IP or you have an investor with a pocket full of money who wants a full accounting of your IP assets. The time to do it is now without a deadline hanging over anyones head.

Bear in mind that the nature of IP audits is that it's often an on and off process that can go on for weeks. This is unavoidable when you need documents from the government or, as is sometimes the case, signatures on agreements to clean up problems that your lawyer finds. The process can seem glacially and unacceptably slow if you need that money, but it all hinges on completing the IP audit.

What You Will Learn from an Audit

A properly conducted IP audit will analyze a textbook set of questions. The most basic is whether your company owns the rights. If your reaction is, "Of course we own it," guess what, maybe not. There are more ways to screw up ownership to IP than you can imagine.

For example, have you ever hired an independent contractor to create IP for you? It might have been a company to develop your website, an advertising agency to develop your an ad campaign or whatever. In a great example of one of many ways to screw up in the world of IP is that if you don't have a written agreement that clearly and properly says that you own the IP, then your independent contractor owns it although you paid for it. Ouch.

I'd hate to be you when you're explaining to your Board how you spent $100,000 on a website and don't own the copyright. Maybe somebody can get Paul Simon to write a song called, "A Hundred Ways to Lose Your IP."

Then if you own it, the next issue is have you adequately protected it. A part of the audit will also look at whether your right to use the IP is dependant on rights from a third party. For example, you may have custom created software modules that you own, but you may not be able to use them without a license to some underlying software.

Another issue that your audit will explore is whether the scope of your rights is sufficient for you to exploit your IP. Moreover, it you have exploited your rights, have you done so properly. This will look at issues like whether you've kept control of your IP through proper license and confidentiality agreements. A case in point would be letting third parties use your trademark without any controls in place. This could cause you to lose a trademark even if you registered it.

The final question I like to answer in my IP audits is whether the IP rights you're asserting present a risk of litigation. Here, I'll deal with issues like does anyone else claim overlapping rights?

My suggestion is that you not wait for some third party to force you to get your arms around your IP assets. You should want to do it for your benefit. You need to know what you have and if there are problems with what you think you have, it's better to deal with it sooner instead of later.

OY9 has fought hundreds of domain problems and intellectual property rights issues.  Contact us today for more information.

The GPay vs PayPal Showdown?

All of a sudden the world is abuzz with GPay (I'll be saying Gpay from here on out, but it's really Google Payments) - the latest online payment method from who else, of course, other than Google.

Yep, Google, for some strategic visionary reason, has been forming this new payment method over the last several years. After 9/11, with the increased requirements imposed upon banking and quasi-banking organizations, have been a bear in the finance industry. However in their usual laissez faire style, I'm sure they'll do just fine. With as much money as those guys got, they can afford to make a few mistakes.

Now, before I go on, I don't want you to think that the long and involved story I'm about to present to you is done so without any basis from which to speak. I have been one of the most vocal supporters of PayPal, facilitating the integration of PayPal into TigerDirect.com as the first true online ecommerce "player" to integrate PayPal into their shopping cart. Pre v 1.0 of any official integration process.

PayPal continues to innovate and release new great products and expand their services and I have provided PayPal with many interviews along with many varied journals and newspapers saying just that. In fact, there's a PayPal case study with me in about 10 languages.

Try it! Search PayPal Lonny Paul and I bet you get at least a few hundred references that will backup my story.. but today, we'll leave it fresh with the perspective of SearchTopix.Com.

The latest round in the Battle of the Giants is underway. The gloves are off - let battle commence. After nearly a year in the planning Gpay has finally been unleashed to tame the PayPal tiger. While other companies have been looking longingly at Google's mouthwatering advertising income, Google has been planning to take a chunk out of eBay owned PayPals' equally mouthwatering profits. PayPal provided nearly a quarter of eBay's recent $1.3 Billion quarterly profit but I don't think this is Google's target. Why would Google want to alienate one of their largest advertisers? Why would Google want to get involved in the problem riddled online auction game? Would eBay allow Gpay on their site? I think Google's strategy is double-pronged

• To put the Gpay icon alongside their Ads to show that the trader accepts this form of payment
• To attack the broader online-payment market which is also PayPal's future target market

I know what it is, and it's NOT these....

Maximizing your Online Ad Revenue

Placing small ads, like those from Google Adsense that can been seen on many of the OY9.net sites, may at least give you enough revenue to pay your web hosting bill, domain name annually and if it could support a case of beer now and then, that wouldn't be so bad would it?

Many people may not thing that there is enough traffic coming to their site in order for them to make any money. Well, if there isn't anyone coming, then I suggest either a) you write more; or b) you write better. Better may mean that the content is not unique enough and doesn't have enough references to provide it any validity in the 'ether world' of the Internet.

LonnyPaul.com is a real mish-mash of content, ranging from me yelling about the articles on WikiHow, to talking about my close enounters with another cellular phone or wireless device, or taking a serious tone, discuss Intellectual Property protection, UDRP strategies and much more. Since there is such a wide array of content, it's hard to put the site into a "category" of any kind aside from "technology and news." None the less, it generates enough traffic to pay for itself and all my sites hosting expense.

If you think about it, it's not that much money you need to make. Let's do the math. For most people, a $9.99/month hosting account takes care of up to about 10 "average" sites. Let's say you annually register only your one domain and keep that your focus. Your TCO is about $130/year. That's just over $10 a month. And $10 a month isn't too hard to do, you just need to ensure you follow the best practices and the rules of the advertisers.

First, in addition to the ever popular program by Google (Adsense), there are also programs from Yahoo, Intellitext, Kontera and Chikita, among others. Each advertiser primarily has a 'wizard' of sorts online, allowing you to make the selections as to where you are going to put the ad, sometimes it's associated category, and the size and color for presentation. It outputs a little piece of javascript which you then need to drop into your site template to provide you with constant exposure.

This site, and hundreds of thousand others, are run on the TypePad Publishing platform. I can't say enough good things about TypePad and WordPress, and their seemingly array of templates done from the community is inspiring. Putting an ad in is really as finding a space and then pasting in the code.

There are templates, like "AdsMinded" that already has logic built in for Google and the placement of ads. You can see a variant of this template in action on Doral Central, a local community directory. You can see how the ads display, change and are interwoven. You'll notice text with double underscores as well. Those are contextual provided by Kontera.

Once you get your tags up, check your site and start to watch the pennies roll in. But, you only need about 33 pennies a day to pay for all your stuff.

For further information, you cant contact OY9 Network for more information or to get you started today!

Welcome to OY9 on VNUnetBlogs!

• Marketing
• Media Management
• Custom Website Development
• Site monetization Strategies
• Business Plans and Processes
• Intellectual Property Management

There's a lot going on over at OY9.NET!  Welcome to our home on VNUnetBlogs, our home for this version of our site.  We are providing this distributed content as a public service.  Many of our articles can provide you with invaluable information to make your day, week or job, just a little bit better. 

If you can't get it done on your own, know that OY9 is here with our seasoned professionals standing ready to help your company achieve their goals.  No matter the project, big or small, contact us for the best personalized services you will find anywhere!

Visit our primary site, at http://www.oy9.net, for the most up to date information, or check out our RSS feed on the sidebar.  Email us at info@oy9.net for any information.

We look forward to informing you!

P.S.  The other reason we HAD to join VNUnetblogs is that they utilize this platform for their European coverage of the various Consumer Electronics shows, even with the site http://www.cesblog.co.uk.  I just happen to own cesblog.com and hope to make a big splash for the International Consumer and Electronics Show in Las Vegas for 2007!  Then again, I'm not really a one-man consumer electronics newsteam, so who knows. I've already declined several valuable offers for the domain, but who knows...