miss spelt domain name sharks

[Jchudleigh]

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Hi there

I am in my first week at Laura Ashley and have been looking at the current affiliate marketing that we are running through CJ and Linkshare.

By coincidence I found that one of our key affiliates in CJ is earning a great deal of commission from us through a misspelt domain name that he obviously bought 'www.laurashley.com' note the missing 'a' on ashley.

As I am new to this arena i thought that it may be good to get some advice from some experts about the best way to deal with this as obviously we do not want to lose the income but we do not want to pay someone for traffic that should be ours anyway.

Any advice would be greatly received.

Many thanks
Joel

[ParisEngLtd]

Not sure how many would agree with me but as far as I am concerned misspelt domains is a perfectly acceptable way to generate income if you can find them. If this guy hadn't registered the name his visitors wouldn't be going to your site they would just be getting a error to say the page can not be displayed (and maybe going to visit a competitor instead).


Many Thanks

Adrian Paris

new new new - To those who can't run their own scripts to link through to affiliate content on eBay we have written an easy to use hosted script just for you . . .
Currently beta testing but your welcome to visit eBay.ClickGB.com - Earn Money From eBay, no sign up, no registration.

Paris Engineering Ltd
remote.clickgb.com - Remote Repair Services

[drivetowin]

Why should that traffic be yours? - you didn't register the domain name and he/she did...

Unless you clearly state in your terms and conditions that affiliates may not register domain names that are obvious misspellings (and did so before they registered the domain name) then in my personal opinion their commissions are correctly payable.

I'm sorry but I have no sympathy in this situation, for a company the size of Laura Ashley the cost of a domain name is neither here or there and to not register all reasonable mispellings is either naive or incompetent.

[sgpratley]

Hi Joel, welcome to the forum.

I think you're going to find a big difference in the definition of

traffic that should be ours anyway

between your affiliates and yourselves.

Like Adrian says, if this guy hadn't registered the domain it will go to an error page a competitor, or somewhere else that doesn't represent your brand as you'd like.
He's at least making you some US sales you'd have lost without him so it's not all

traffic that should be ours anyway

And it's definitely a better experience for your customers than laurashley.co.uk!

Try typing "laurashley" into Google
Your own listing is this one which isn't going to convert very well either.
LAURA ASHLEY -Laura Ashley - Laurashley.Co.Uk

This isn't meant to slag off your company's efforts in any way. It just shows that there is plenty of ground your own marketing hasn't covered, and that affiliates are plugging these holes for you.

Unfortunately it looks like the original set of T&C's weren't worded by someone who has a very good grasp of online brand management (or spelling for that matter!).

"Please note: the use of the Laura Ashley brand name and misspellings is prohibited within Google The Laura Ashley Display URL, LAURA ASHLEY is strickly prohibited within Google "

I'd suggest you talk to CJ and to your affiliates before leaping in though. A lot of niche affiliate tactics work around picking up a long tail of traffic that your own marketing has missed so make sure any new rules you want to introduce aren't going to suddenly chop that tail off!

[John Jupp]

There is a huge market in misspelt domain names. They're not classed as passing off. They're not trademarked. They don't represent the name of an existing company. They're simply misspellings and companies that wish to obtain the traffic from misspelt domains should either buy them when they are in the register or contact holders of the domains and see if they are for sale (most are).

I acquired a domain privately recently and the vendor actually advised me very kindly to acquire the misspelling. A mere £6.99 for two years and it'll probably make me a heck of a lot in sales.

As ParisEng has mentioned...if the domain was available on the register and wasn't being used then you'd get a 404 error. Be thankful that someone is using it to send traffic to you and not a competitor.

[hirschnathan]

Wasnt there a story with tesco about a year ago, with someone making money on tesco diets and he got sued?

[km8]

Hi there

I am in my first week at Laura Ashley and have been looking at the current affiliate marketing that we are running through CJ and Linkshare.

By coincidence I found that one of our key affiliates in CJ is earning a great deal of commission from us through a misspelt domain name that he obviously bought 'www.laurashley.com' note the missing 'a' on ashley.

As I am new to this arena i thought that it may be good to get some advice from some experts about the best way to deal with this as obviously we do not want to lose the income but we do not want to pay someone for traffic that should be ours anyway.

Any advice would be greatly received.

Many thanks
Joel

Hi Joel,

Congrats on the new job.

Your post says it all really - you do want the business, and the traffic isn't "ours anyway".

If brand was all there was to marketing, you wouldn't need affiliates.

Affiliates are there to add something that you (or your employer) didn't think of - and that's exactly what this affiliate did for Laura Ashley.

Advice? Offer him or her a price that he/she is happy with, or ..., live with it if his registration predates any T&C prohibiting such domains.

[drivetowin]

There was a case involving tesco diets but that wasn't a misspelling if I remember correctly - he was using tesco diets as a url - that's a bit different as it was a tesco trademark.

If he had registered tescdiets or tescodeets there would probably have not been the same issue (but then he would probably have not got the same volume of traffic).

As I posted earlier, to me any reasonable sized brand should probably be registering and/or acquiring at least the most 50 (and probably) most 200 easily guessed misspellings - considering most of them could be picked up for less than a fiver a year it would have to be a wise way for their business to spend a grand or two.

[smingle]

ok to add a different question to this debate. what about if you owned something like wwwlauraashley.co.uk and was doing the same thing.

So in effect he was getting straight type in traffic into internet explorer and getting sales that way.

Would you say this is classed as bad, wrong or illegal ? or would you say this is ok

This question is aimed at everyone and not just the original poster

[ParisEngLtd]

I think you would be on seriously shaky ground, simply because this does contain the brand name in it's proper form, whether the company wanted to take any issue with it would of course be entirely up to them, but I would have thought legally they could.



Many Thanks

Adrian Paris

new new new - To those who can't run their own scripts to link through to affiliate content on eBay we have written an easy to use hosted script just for you . . .
Currently beta testing but your welcome to visit eBay.ClickGB.com - Earn Money From eBay, no sign up, no registration.

Paris Engineering Ltd
remote.clickgb.com - Remote Repair Services

[tbp]

I always though that under nominet rules, you were on dodgy ground with misspellings, as you are considered to be passing your self off as the merchant?

From one of their disputes:

The Domain Names are all clearly similar to the name in which the Complainant has rights. They are all self evidently misspellings or variants of that name.

7.4 Accordingly I find that the Complainant does have Rights in respect of a name or mark which is identical or similar to the Domain Names

[sgpratley]

There is a very thin line between profiting from misspellings and passing off, but the bottom line is (with the caveat that I'm not a lawyer so don't rely on this) you can't get trademark protection for misspellings so they are fair game for your competition.

If they are fair game for your competition, you should either deal with it yourself or let your affiliates do it for you.

Any e-commerce manager who has ever looked at the tail end of their search logs will know that covering every misspelling, mis-spelling, mispelling and mispeling is near impossible....so that leaves 2 options.

1) Let your affiliates deal with it
2) Let your competition deal with it

Your call...

[sgpratley]

a name or mark which is identical or similar to the Domain Names

Still very much a grey area. TescoDiets.com contains the trademark so could be said to be 'similar'. TescDiets.com doesn't contain the trademark.

If a competitor registered TescDiets.com, eventually I think the law will catch up and nail them for passing off, but an affiliate operates with the consent of the merchant....right?

[moredial]

Nominet only covers UK domain registrations which are covered by UK business law.

My reply is slightly tongue in cheek - buy / take the domain off the affiliate and offer them a position on the marketing board - the salary may work out less than what you are paying in commissions and, from what you say, the affiliate has a good grasp of internet marketing which can only be plus.

[Utterfly]

Nominet's domain policy is a joke and it is very easy for a large company to expropriate all misspellings and even doubtful similarities.

Not to hijack this thread, but I've just got one of my domains 'ucan.co.uk' taken away by Ucan Car Credit, simply because after it was caught and used for their affiliate program (and at that time their T&C welcomed any TM domains, even though in this case it's far from being TM) company failed to send payment in time, their program was put on hold by TD and I redirected it to another car finance company for a week. Nominet decided this was abusive and unfair to them, so they'll be happy owners of generic and prominent domain name, which is exact trademark of at least 2 other non-related to Ucan car credit companies and a part of the name for dozen of companies...

Certainly, as it was earning 50quid/day, it was easy to pay 750 pounds for Nominet to "decide" this dispute. And if that company really cared about their TM, they would firstly go after ucancar.co.uk and ucancredit.co.uk... But they only wanted better name for their business.