Oh no. Has it happened to you? One day you're checking up on your SEO and all of the sudden..
Boom. You see a product that looks all too familiar. You read the listing title only to find that it is almost word for word what you have.
Yup. You are a victim of good old fashion capitalism.
So before you go call 911 and bust these losers for stealing your stuff..
Do me a favor and think about when you first started your Etsy shop. Back when you had the idea of selling online. Do you remember what your first step probably was?...
Typing your product into Etsy.
And once you hit that enter button.. Then what did you do?
You either used your thumb to scroll through countless pictures on Etsy of the exact same product you were about to sell. Or you whizzed that little wheel on your mouse to accomplish the same thing.
Look. It sucks. I know, it has happened to me 1,000 times.
In fact, wanna know a crazy story?
I actually had a friend of a friend sit next to me at a party one time and ask me about what I did for work. I explained that I was a full-time seller and the product that I sold. Because she was a perfect prospect for my product, I let her handle my product and even gifted her one for her baby shower.
Not a few months went by till I started seeing my product being sold from a different store. With a little research, turns out my friend of a friend REALLY liked my product and decided to make her own.
Fast forward a few years and I am seeing my EXACT pictures on amazon being sold from a Chinese retailer.
I wish I could say to you, here is how I cracked the code to protect myself from everything. But as you can see.. I am just as much a victim of it.
However, I do have a secret. It's not found in some hidden cupboard or locked in a treasure chest.
Its a mindset shift.
Back to storytime.
The woman who stole my product and all of our SEO, style, etc had a lot of money. More money than I had at the time. So she was able to invest in some ideas for marketing our product.
I watched her like a HAWK. And I saw her make mistakes.I watched her invest in things that didn't pan out. This means, I didn't have to invest in it to find out!
I also watched her become successful in certain areas. At the time, Facebook advertising was just starting to take off. She hired someone to run their account, and guess what I did? I copied what they did.
At one point in the relationship, I was all butt hurt about their product cutting into my sales. I was angry that they stole it from me, and bitter...
However,
I made more money than I would have EVER on my own.
After I sold my business I took a few years to do my dream job.
Highschool Water polo coach.
I once had an athletic director ask me, “ Jered, What does the program need to be successful”
This was my answer.
The boys need work ethic.
They need go coaching.
They need competition.
If we spent our summer playing bad teams, we would just be really good at playing lazy water polo. However, When competitive competition is involved, we have less room for error, or training harder, and learning every game we play.
So when someone is stealing your idea, You have two choices.
You can be mad and feel anger towards them.
You can see them as an opportunity to push yourself even more.
If someone steals your idea, it means your doing something right.
Now there is a line. Like if someone just steals your exact logo or something (or in my case my exact pictures with models that I paid from my own pocket!)
Then you have a right to stand up for yourself. There are ways to go about this that i will let you google if this happens to be you.
(in short, contact them and tell them to take it down. If they don't, contact Etsy. If they seem like they are overseas, just contact Etsy first ( they will just keep going to the next innocent victim if you give them a chance to move on without a black mark on their record.)
Good luck out there!
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