Hello, I am making a killing with a copyrighted EMD right now ranking 1st on Google, although this is only short term it proved to be worth it while it lasts, my question is...how should I go about the future with it?

I'm guessing my two options are:

Make bank until I get a complaint from the company.

or

Sell it soonish to somebody that has another use for it? Such as not SEO or organic traffic source.

Any tips from people that have been in this situation before would be great.

Personally, I think you're sitting on a bomb. If you wait until you get a C&D, it will become much less valuable overnight... but if you can manage to sell it beforehand, the problem becomes the new owner and you can honestly say that you have not received anything. Of course, it would be best if the new owner was from a country that didn't honor the copyright... (wasn't this why companies with copyrighted info were all for SOPA? lol)

Of course, if you can't get anything decent from the site, then just collecting the money until the C&D shows up might be your best route...

Turn it into a review site.

Originally Posted by OldSalt

but if you can manage to sell it beforehand, the problem becomes the new owner and you can honestly say that you have not received anything. ..

Assuming you're not disclosing what you know about it...

There are 2 types of copyright infringing EMD"s.

1. An example would be www.buy-productname.com on which you review a product, post news about a product or advertise the product through affiliate links. This is somewhat of a grey area, but you shouldn't get in much trouble since it is free advertisement for a company or product. Big companies who use very specific marketing tactics like Apple might not like this at all, but in general sites like those are ok and shouldn't cause much off a problem.

2. Sites with an Artist name, company name or product name that are used to generate income through other means of Affiliates/CPA/Adsense. Those are dangerous sites because you are generating an income without it having a direct benefit to the company, and perhaps even lead visitors to buy a different product or give the company a bad impression. This indeed is like sitting on a bomb...Abandon ship, register a new domain and set up a 301 redirecting from your EMD to your non-EMD.

In both cases you can get a CD letter from the company/person you are infringing, they can proof that you are making money through their brand name and profiting of them without any endorsement. If they really want to play evil they could set an estimation of what you made off them and sue you for that amount.

You're way better of using a variation of the name in the domain name, spending a little extra time and still ranking it on pos 1.

I would sell it now that it's still making money, you can flip it on Flippa for 12 months profits. I know cause I know a company that has tons of branded emd's and he is selling like crazy despite of the brand in the emd. I would think buyers are smarter then that but appaerantly not

I agree with hitman

What are you monetizing with?

If it was Adsense I'd dump it as you are just asking for instaban.

If it was a more lenient network I may try to ride it out. I dunno about selling it to someone else, seems kinda shady.

transfer the domain to another domain registratar example godaddy to namecheap. Use a virtual credit card to fund the namecheap account. The virtual credit card should have a made up name, the namecheap whois should also be made up. Preferably the same names. Use a made up address in a country like russia , china , where it is hard to sue anyone from a western country which is what i assume the company that shall sue you is located in. Make a fake paypal account with a virtual credit card to receive payments off of adsense, affliates ,etc.

Originally Posted by Gyuman82

What are you monetizing with?

If it was Adsense I'd dump it as you are just asking for instaban.

If it was a more lenient network I may try to ride it out. I dunno about selling it to someone else, seems kinda shady.

Dude, those adsenseflippers have 1200 emd's and a large portion of them are sites with the brand in it and even with ONLY the brand in it. They are doing this for over a year and only got a dozen complains and never got their Adsense banned. Personally I dont like it really but it isn't that much of a problem in reality.

Hitmans suggestion to make it a review site is a good idea indeed

Originally Posted by nik-0

Dude, those adsenseflippers have 1200 emd's and a large portion of them are sites with the brand in it and even with ONLY the brand in it. They are doing this for over a year and only got a dozen complains and never got their Adsense banned. Personally I dont like it really but it isn't that much of a problem in reality.

I agree that a lot of sellers on flippa do it, and you could probably get a way with it.

However there is a chance too that you won't get lung cancer if you smoke a pack of cigarettes every day. Does it make it a good idea? Not necessarily.

If you rely on a good amount of your income on a program like adsense, one complaint and a manual review can get your account banned. If you are one of these people with 100s of adsense sites or even a few dozen, I would stay away from doing anything that even smells like it is against the Adsense TOS. Heck, some people don't do anything wrong and get banned.

I guess it comes down to what you value more, short term profit or longevity. Plenty of people have lost their Adsense accounts for less.

I'm not worried if the company contacts me, I have no problem giving up the domain if a legal issue presents itself. However if I do try to sell it, I will clearly say it is a trademarked domain in the sale description.

Originally Posted by Gyuman82

I agree that a lot of sellers on flippa do it, and you could probably get a way with it.

However there is a chance too that you won't get lung cancer if you smoke a pack of cigarettes every day. Does it make it a good idea? Not necessarily.

If you rely on a good amount of your income on a program like adsense, one complaint and a manual review can get your account banned. If you are one of these people with 100s of adsense sites or even a few dozen, I would stay away from doing anything that even smells like it is against the Adsense TOS. Heck, some people don't do anything wrong and get banned.

I guess it comes down to what you value more, short term profit or longevity. Plenty of people have lost their Adsense accounts for less.

Yeah like I said, personally I dont like it either as my Adsense account is pretty valuable to me. Instead to rank for brands I just started a huge review site for companies so the names only occur in the url, nothing illegal about that and it wont be that much harder to rank then an emd I guess.

I have a few sites with brand names, one of them more than 8 months old and receiving payments monthly.