. some parting wisdom

byjimmyvestal1

152 followers

7 years ago

For all you new people (the group I'm still associated with) I wanted to give you a heads up so you don't run up against what I did today. I've been here a little over a month and messed around with 2 little domains where I didn't plan well and my niches were too broad. I finally thought of a good one a couple of weeks ago while I was simply looking at my watch.

My wife says I have a problem. I have about 15 watches. I don't know why, I just like watches and at a local store I can usually find good deals on Fossil brand watches and it helps that they have a few nice looking watches. So, I'm looking at my watch and the thought came to me, hey, why don't I do a blog on Fossil watches. I own quite a few of them, I wear one every single day, I like them and there are some "Fossil" keywords getting 1,000s of looks each month. Competition, in most cases, is below 100. Perfect!

So I go about trying to find a domain name by searching on Jaaxy. The keywords "Fossile Watches For Men" are searched for over 5000 times per month, with 1500 clicking on first page results. Competition is around 100 (now I know why). I search for the domain name "Fossilwatchesformen.com" and, by golly, it's available, so I snag it..

That was 2 weeks ago. I spent the time writing a few articles of which I had to research as they were more of the information type and then wrote a couple of 900+ words posts. Now, I know that's not a lot, but I figured I had plenty of time and I wanted to do this right this time, plug I have a 50hr week job and a family so time is a precious commodity (hmmm blog post idea lol). I had researched a bit on if I could use a trademark in a domain name and I got the feeling that if users didn't confuse the site with the official company that one would be okay. So I put a little blurb in my header image and my footer stating "fossilwatchesformen.com is in no way affiliated or endorsed by the Fossil company". I even put it in yellow against a dark background.

I started signing up with some affiliate programs where I could list some watch sales and started going about putting them on some pages. But anyway, to make a long story even longer, today Fossil Group contacted me via a "cease and desist" letter. Apparently, I registered a domain name that contains their trademark. They demand that I "disable any and all content associated with the above stated domain and take steps to transfer the name to Fossil Group" (which I have no clue how to do)

I wasn't mad when I read it, I was just tired. I had put all of the early work into the domain registered with google analytics, search console, created a facebook page, started a facebook ad campaign.... and now I was be told to shut it all down.. sucks!

So, before you latch onto that domain name, make sure it does not contain a trademark. You may get away with it, you may not. But, it's gonna make you very sad if/when you have some big company saying "it's all coming down" and all your work was for nothing and there's nothing you can do about it..

Anyway like I said, I'm tired. I don't think this affiliate marketing is for me at this particular time in my life. Wealthy Affiliates is a great site. I went from not even knowing what affiliate marketing was to creating 3 different domains, in the span of 1 month. I urge every new person here, watch all of the training tutorials you can stomach. You may not remember all of the material, but some of it sticks in your head. Good luck to each and every one of you..

Jimmy