I’ve had enough. Enough with bloggers taking my photos, cropping out my watermark, then using them on their affiliate laden sites. ENOUGH. Most Etsy sellers don’t even know this is happening but you need to protect your brand online. This is a step by step guide to tracking down people who may be using your work without your permission.
Find Affiliate Links
If you have your Google Analytics set up, you can see if any affiliate links are sending you traffic. I saw this in my Traffic Sources when I was looking over the month. It looked promising so I went digging.
Well, well, well. What do we have here? To see the listing they are using, I select Landing Page as my Secondary Dimension.
Affiliate Link Breakdown
Tracking affiliate links to a blog post is about impossible but there are some clues you can use. Take a look at link #3
/listing/211483986/pink-tulip-wreath-spring-wreath-mothers?ref=related-1&source=aw&awc=6220_1514336244_95083bb237a4c22fdff9adabe979445c
/listing/211483986/pink-tulip-wreath-spring-wreath-mothers?
My listing number with the listing title .
By adding www.etsy.com to the beginning, it will take you to your listing.
www.etsy.com/listing/211483986/pink-tulip-wreath-spring-wreath-mothers?
source=aw
This is Awin, which is a global affiliate network.
awc=6220
Etsy’s Awin Advertiser ID
_1514336244_95083bb237a4c22fdff9adabe979445c
Not a clue.
If you change your Secondary Dimension to Ad Content, it should look like this:
This is the Publisher’s ID, aka the blogger’s ID number associated with Awin. There is no way to search for this, but it helps in confirming you’ve found the correct blog later.
Find Referring Websites in Etsy Stats
Now that we have some information to go off of, let’s get over to Etsy to see what we can find for the listing.
Go to the Listing Page-> Click “Stats” -> Scroll down to “Websites”
Note: Even though the affiliate link is sending more traffic than Etsy, the link does not count toward my SEO score like organic referral traffic. It’s actually skewing the view data when I go to make a decision to renew the listing based on traffic. There is more to my renewal decision making but view trends are part of it.
Find My Photo
My process is pretty simple.
- Go to the referring website & poke around a little bit until I find my photo.
- If it’s not within the first couple of pages, I use the blog’s search.
Found it.
Yet again, another blogger who has cropped out my watermark. I’ll save the full rant for later but at this point I am pissed.
To confirm these are the affiliate links, I click them to view the full link in my browser’s address bar. It should look like the very long link from the beginning of this post.
Search Pinterest
My next step is to search Pinterest to see if my photo is being used to drive traffic to this blog. It is super easy with this trick:
www.pinterest.com/source/WEBSITE.com
Replace WEBSITE with the blog’s address
Here’s what I found:
Why is this a big deal?
{I’m about to use some salty language. You’ve been warned}
Some sellers would look at this and think “Hey! The blog is sending me traffic! Ya for them getting eyes on my products!” True, BUT
- THIS IS MY PHOTO. Not only did it take me hours to make the product, but it also took hours to photograph & edit it. I did the fucking work. They are using my hard work to generate traffic to their blog to make money off my product. It took them 5 seconds to right-click, Save Image, crop, Save.
- My watermark is cropped out. If this blog goes belly up, pinners have no idea who actually made it because the link is broken. It’s also a US Copyright Act violation on the part of the blogger. DO NOT CROP OUT WATERMARKS.
Report the Pin
Pinterest is good about taking down pins that use your photos. They usually respond within 24 hours and the pin is taken down within 48 hours. The form you fill out is very simple & quick so don’t be afraid to report them.
And yes. I am that bitch who reports people. Don’t fuck with my photos or use them to generate traffic to your affiliate laden blog, and then I won’t have to be.
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