{"id":184,"date":"2022-11-17T12:13:29","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T20:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/?p=184"},"modified":"2022-11-17T12:13:29","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T05:13:29","slug":"how-my-best-side-hustle-ever-almost-ended-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/17\/how-my-best-side-hustle-ever-almost-ended-in-court\/","title":{"rendered":"How My Best Side Hustle Ever Almost Ended in Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2006, I stumbled upon an amazing little side hustle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a theory that an exact match domain would convey authority in the search results, and this was long before I even know what an \u201cexact match domain\u201d was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Quick primer: if you\u2019re searching in Google for \u201cblue widgets\u201d, the exact match domain would be bluewidgets.com. Up until late 2012, these domains held an unnatural advantage in the search results.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That authority would translate into clicks and sales and profits, I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I was right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least partially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, New Balance had just released the model 992, a popular, high-priced running shoe that was the flagship of their lineup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simple, but effective<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Amazingly, the domain NewBalance992.com was available, so I registered it without a second thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why had no one else thought of this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I quickly put together a website to promote the shoes. Looking back, it would be a disservice to even call it a website, since it was only 1 page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had yet to discover WordPress, so I built this myself using the Yahoo SiteBuilder software. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, you can get a picture of my web design skills (or lack of them):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s it. That was the entire site. When the price changed I\u2019d have to update it manually and re-publish the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This simple one-page website had no internal navigation \u2014 no About Us, no Contact Us, no Privacy Policy, and almost no content at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And despite looking like it was designed by a blind 3rd grader (with apologies to the blind 3rd graders), it converted like crazy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it lacked in substance it made up for in value<\/em> \u2014 it delivered exactly<\/em> what searchers were looking for: the best deal on the red hot New Balance 992 running shoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pumped AdWords traffic to this page as hard as I could. I made $15-20 on every order; several thousand dollars worth in the first few months after launching the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things were going so well in fact, I registered NewBalance993.com, so I could play the same game whenever they introduced the next model!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come to think of it, this might have been my best side hustle ever<\/strong>. It had a negligible start-up cost, took almost no time to build, manage and maintain, and was consistently profitable from the first days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was happy, customers were happy, Shoebuy was happy. It was a win-win-win situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cease and desist<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But as you might have guessed, New Balance was not happy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Their lawyers told me so.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCease and desist,\u201d<\/em> the letter said, followed by some scary legal-ese. According to them, my little one-page site constituted \u201ctrademark infringement.\u201d It was \u201cconfusing\u201d customers and \u201cdamaging [their] brand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, I didn\u2019t really see what the big deal was. I was selling their products, after all \u2014 not trashing their reputation or sending people to Nike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reasoned I bought the domain fair and square, but could be persuaded<\/em> to sell it to a deep-pocketed corporate giant, for the right price of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But whatever visions I had of a big domain-sale payday were fleeting. After about 10 minutes of research it became pretty clear they were 100% in the right and I was in the wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here I was, thinking I was providing shoe-shoppers with a valuable service (truth is I was), when it was actually illegal<\/em> the whole time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using another company\u2019s trademark in a domain name was a no-no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So rather than face the wrath of the 100-year old company\u2019s legal team, I folded. I shut down the site and all the advertising to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takeaways<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

While it was painful to lose such an easy cash cow of a side hustle, my brush with the law taught me an important lesson about doing business online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lesson was to build your own brand<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Real businesses have their own brands and if you\u2019re serious about your side hustle, you\u2019ll have one too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a longer, harder road for sure, but it\u2019s the only way that works long-term. Sure, you may be able to game a few bucks off somebody else\u2019s brand name for a few months, but then what? My New Balance 992 site lasted 6 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was in 2006. How long would it last today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That kind of \u201cpiggybacking\u201d isn\u2019t sustainable. Look at\u00a0the most successful and innovative affiliate businesses; all have built their own standalone brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond that, there\u2019s the matters of pride, integrity, and legacy. Did I really want to be the guy squatting on exact-match trademark domains for popular shoes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seems kind of silly now, looking back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you think? Ever been served with a \u201ccease and desist\u201d notice for your work online or off? Any funny side hustle brand-building missteps you care to share?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2006, I stumbled upon an amazing little side hustle. I had a theory that an exact match domain would convey authority in the search results, and this was long before I even know what an \u201cexact match domain\u201d was. (Quick primer: if you\u2019re searching in Google for \u201cblue widgets\u201d, the exact match domain would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-online-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sidehustleera.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}