Originally Posted by adendreams

I hate pirates.
I spend hours per day seeking out my shit and sending take-down notices. I even have battles with pirates trying to take their domain names. Fuckheads are rabid with my content.

I actually started winning in the last few months, I got so much shit taken down that I have tipped the scales and I'm actually getting the drop on these fuckers the same day they post my shit. (I also have help of a good anti-piracy firm)

Anyway it's when I started winning that I started noticing something surprising - I'm making a lot of money from the pirate traffic. The pirates that don't take the effort to cut off my watermarks are sending me a SHIT LOAD of traffic (type-ins). So what does this mean? Should I continue to wipe them all out or let some of them run with my shit and send me joins...where is the tipping point? How do you find it?

The answer was right there in my stats - once you get the piracy down to a manageable level you can see quite clearly the fluctuations of your type in traffic. One pirate link sent my traffic to a higher level than its ever been - fucking Reddit is HUGE and its all pirate motherfuckers and I hate them - but goddamn they are making money.

Moral of the story - battle them hard - then watch them and watch the flow of your type ins carefully (of course this wont apply to many of you) But if you can strike a balance and allow some of the guys (who dont remove watermarks) to run with your content - big gains can be realized.