I have always wanted to own Allison.com.  Alas the chances of me doing so depends on Rolls Royce going out of business and I don’t wish that on them at all. You see, back in 94 they acquired Allison Engines a US motor company and the .com domain. They stuck an auto redirect on it to www.rollsroyce.com and there ended that story. The Allison.net address is owned by an email address reseller for people wanting an email account ending in allison.net.

So I did the next best thing and bought allison.co . It didn’t come as easy as the other.co domains I bought, they were simple transactions against which there was no opposition (pretty easy when you are buying for micro niches) but someone had also wanted allison.co and so the battle began.

Actually it went the way of most auctions with the person who wanted the domain dropped a bid on 15 minutes before close and I waited till 5 minutes to go and kept bidding till I topped their proxy bid. There were no further bids from them and voila!

Whether .co is weighty with Google or other search methods time will tell. Literally, new TLD have the disadvantage going up against aged domains which Google does use in their search algorithm. Good news though with Google has pledged to treat .co sites as global sites unless they have Colombian content (keep your cocaine sales to a .com if you want a bigger market).

If you are positioning yourself as a market leader then you are bound to hit some negative people along the way. Whether you are the brazen “newcomer” or the entrenched expert, there will be someone, sooner or later, who is going to disagree with you.  So what do you do?

Be Professional, Always

One thing that you will have over 99% of the people in your niche is that you are deliberately there. Most people in your niche are just following their passion, enjoying the attention and rewards that come with being a market leader and have not cultivated any kind of professional demeanor to go with that position. When someone seems to be cutting in on their action, they can get quite nasty. Alas, the least professional will get the most nasty.

Currently, in one of the niches I move in, there is discord between one person who has created and run a forum for the last 18 months, and a member of that forum that was banned for giving her professional opinion (she has years of professional working experience and is studying to formalise that experience into recognised qualifications).  She has now set up her own forum focusing on that part of the niche and is moving to become a market leader, after all she does do this for a living outside of the niche.

Rather than get snotty in her new forum and cause issues with the old, she posted her forum philosophy and went on her way building her own community. Professional.

This seems to have incensed the guy who runs the other forum and he has posted his own “philosophy” that is neither professional or pleasant.  Guess whose community is going to benefit most from which leader – a community that is lead by a true professional in the field who is not engaging in mud slinging and is sharing her knowledge, or a community that is led by a leader interested in only keeping this part of the niche “for himself”.

Because you know why you are there as a market leader, have a plan and know where you are going, then you will be able to keep your cool if a situation like this crops up for you. Have an opinion, maintain that opinion if it is something you feel strongly about, but allow others to have theirs too. Do not engage in mud-slinging, rather put on the pretend business suit and turn your attention to what is best for your followers, niche and your business (and if you are doing the right thing whatever you do will benefit them all).

Niches Are Not Ladders

If you are moving to become a leader then you really need to grasp that a niche is not a narrow ladder that only one person can be at the top of.  There is not one niche where there is a single “leader” in that field – not one – none. Sooner or later there will be someone that comes along that is just as passionate, or focussed on a slightly different part of that market, and they create their own following.  You don’t need to “bump” someone off the ladder, you just need to keep moving forward and up.

If you think there is only one spot on the top then you will be focussed on the people that are already there, and not on the community that you are building. Remember you are a professional, not a prize fighter.

One of the quickest ways to expand your following is to hook up with someone else in your niche that has a following. I talked about the folly of that first forum owner ignoring the business opportunity of working with me in a previous post .  Combine my list with his list and there would have been a larger JV playing field and we both would have profited.  No matter, I shall work with the new forum to help build and expand so I can JV there.  I don’t believe there is only one place at the top, and neither does the other forum owner. We are in it for the betterment of people like us, not to make sure we are the ONLY ones to profit from our knowledge.

Thanks to Kevin Steele for the picture

This week showed me that there are still people out there that do not get how collaborating within their niche is a win-win and not something to be feared.

Currently I am working on creating a  Sphynx cat site network because, I hope you know, I just love the breed . One area I have steered away within the niche is creating a forum. There are a couple of reasons why.

• Forums are a lot of work dealing with people
• There are already a few fairly good forums out there
• I have products to create that I need to spend my precious time on

I mention this because I want to emphasise I am not a competitor with the guy this post is about.

I used to advertise my Sphynx cat book on one of the forums. Paid advertising that I tried for about 4 months as it wasn’t really working and I didn’t have time to screw around with split testing ads. Recently a question came up in that forum, “are there any good Sphynx cat books out there because everything I have found is written for children”. I left a post saying I had written one and if they searched in Barnes and Noble online store under “Sphynx Cats” they would find it. No links, no spam. The owner of the forum, however, chose to delete my post because I had ceased advertising with them.

Can you see how shortsighted that was?

I was a contributor to the forum, as well as a member. Instead of celebrating that one of their members had written a book, they stamp on something that would link them to a book (good for them). They killed a post that told a member to how to get exactly what they wanted (good for me, good for the forum).

They also have pushed a button with me that means I will not mention their site favourably ever again, I will recommend their competitor forums over theirs as well as spend my advertising dollars elsewhere. I am doing a podcast series about people in the Sphynx cat world, do you think I feel like including them at the moment?

It really is a stupid move to not even consider working with someone in the same niche as you, the benefits go way beyond whatever it is you are. I wonder if someone had recommended my book with a  straight link, what the owner would have done.

If you are meant to be working on something then why on earth are you reading this ?

• sit down
• shut up
• start doing

After you have done then you can check in here and tell me what you did. I’d love to celebrate with you.

Great teasing email graphic.

Which of the following ads are disapproved by Facebook (that means they were approved and then they changed their mind) and which one is allowed to run?

The page they link to is the same page that is used in the Facebook ad and hence an affiliate link.

Answer will be posted tomorrow

Ad 1

Ad 2

Ad 3

Really, really in love with sites that look like this

And this

How could you NOT know what to do?

Having an RSS feed is not permission to copy content to your blog without attribution. Period.

Which is why this email is all kinds of wrong

Good morning Allison,

I am writing to you on behalf of the owner of the domain [redacted].  I do not own the domain however I share the server where this domain is hosted.

I have asked the owner to remove the url’s listed in your email. These url’s now 404.

I would like to point out however a few items that you should consider in the future:

a.  Your RSS feeds located at: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/sphynxcatblog/OOLE make this content available.  The purpose of RSS feeds is to syndicate your content so that others may use it and you derive the backlinks and credit as the source on the information. This is important on a number of levels and you may want to reconsider your thinking.

b.  Because you provide your RSS feeds.  You have zero legal standing.  You cannot say ” here, use my content “  and then sue someone for using it.  The owner has taken these url’s down because quite frankly he no longer wishes to send you traffic.  If you do not want people using this content you need to disable your RSS feeds.

c.  The owner of [redacted] was linking to you from his sidebar as well as from his trusted Sphynx Owners links areas.  These have been pulled meaning you will no longer have the valuable backlinks from a PR4 site nor the traffic.

I would suspect that based on your actions here that you are either new to online endeavors and or ignorant with respect to these issues. I have no dog in this fight,  as this is not my domain but I do desire that people succeed in their online businesses. Your position(s) in these matters will only harm your site and prevent growth.

Syndication is a good thing, collaborative exchanges of traffic and information are positive. Threats based on misinformed positions will alienate you from traffic sources and business opportunities.

Warm Regards,

Chris Potoski Content Thief| Owner [<-- link added by me]
WhyZoom Media, LLC
whyzoom .com
P: 919-749-0624

I am a hearty believer in sharing information on the internet. I link to stuff all the time. I also ensure I include attribution to any content I use (as required by copyright law in most countries) and if I want to reprint in full I will request permission.

Do not be fooled into thinking if you retain links and have a link to a site somewhere in your site to the site you are pulling from, that copyright laws are covered. You must request permission to reprint work in full (or more than a snippet) before doing so.

Contact the copyright owner for permission first.They may say no, and that is their right. They may say yes as long as attribution is applied. I would have been quite happy to come to an agreement with the blog had permission been sought.

I work hard on ensuring my content is unique and of quality, and in about 40 blogs I PAY for that content to be created and check my staff to ensure they are not fudging by ripping off someone else.

So why was I threatening action over this site apart from the fact they didn’t ask?

1. There was no attribution of the full and direct copy from my RSS feed anywhere on the site (in effect claiming the content to be their own)
2. The blog had no way of contacting the owner so I could not enter communication
3. The host, who appears to be the guy above, did not acknowledge 3 emails, including a DMCA (sworn statement the information was mine)

Oh and why do people think just because I run a cat blog I have no idea about how things work on the internets?

……sound of screeching brakes…………….

Seems I have attracted another dingbat.

I did have the email author’s name redacted from the email above until he replied in a rather unbusiness-like manner.

Links to sites that explain copyright laws and intellectual property use for people like Chris who apparently have no clue -

Nicely worded explanation of website Copyright

Internet lawyer‘s take on copyright infringement

Wikipedia’s page on the DMCA Act

Google’s DMCA process , same as most USA sites