question

I think it depends on how many shirts you've got that are selling like hotcakes. They don't copy the duds.

Sadly not true Lisa, they copied some T-shirts of mine that had sold once in total. Until today i wrote more than 100 dmca letters for more that 2000 copies. Today we Know 60 illegal sites, many of them are down, someone is up again under a different host. i would say, if everyone take 20 minute a day to check and report we will change this situation ( we are many more of them ) while we are waiting for Amazon improvements. i can't say exactly how much these sites are affecting amazon sales but i haven't seen so much drop in my sales instead i have heard many other reporting a slow down.......perhaps it's a case, perhaps not but this is my opinion, take time to create something new AND time to check and report too.

It's been pretty brutal for me personally here on merch. Once I get a shirt consistently selling over 3 a day, it's not long before the sales for that shirt disappear almost completely. Once that happens I search the keywords and sure enough... several rip offs selling for a few cents over base price.

And there's always a few that post the rips right under your own brand name with the basement price so to the average consumer, they have no idea and of course they are going to buy the perceived same product for the lower price.

We of course report the infringers, but very little, if anything, is done. If they do take action in your favor, it will be weeks if not months. Then it will be just a specific color on that listing taken down. Absolutely laughable. Thieves are making a killing on merch because there are very little , if any, consequences.

If a thief is banned, (I've not heard of any to date) you can be assured that they already have multiple backup accounts waiting in the wings or already going strong because Amazon's floodgates are still open to new sellers.

Remember, Amazon makes THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY for themselves whether it's your originally designed shirt or a thieve's ripped-off version. If they lost money, you can bet your life this issue would have been resolved a looong time ago with a simple date-based infringement form specifically for merch sellers that many of us have suggested.

If Amazon could do JUST ONE THING for their army of legit merch sellers, it would be to protect their designs on the site way better. Right now it's incredible easy to extract the layered design from the shirt image. They don't even flatten the design on the shirt. Watermarks would be ideal but there is no way on god's green earth amazon will ever do that.

Good luck out there, it's currently the wild west and the Sheriff is in his office counting his payout.

It's BAD. Made worse by the FB group and 'person' that sells 'best seller' lists & info (for their own gain)! Copycats read on FB that you can make lots of money here! And they'll even provide you with exactly what is selling! So, the copycats steal best sellers and extremely undercut prices! There go your sales!

And MBA even promotes this person. I don't get it, but I would love to understand.

Good Luck to you though.

100% agree @Digiholic ... well said. CG is not a friend to merch sellers. He profits from them and offers silly tools, books that state the obvious, affiliate links to amazon products, and plugins that read your browser history (!!!) . You have to join his "Convert Kit" internet marketing email mailing lists before accessing some of the plugins. Not suspicious at all. All the while criticizing anyone in his groups (free and paid) who complain about the terrible theft on merch and advises them to ignore them and trust amazon with a condescending and arrogant tone. Beware folks.

Hello all. I have idea (nevertheless I'm new, don't sell even 1 shirt and I'm outside USA). Can all honest MBA sellers, make court case, not against single thiefs but against site like shopify etc. who constantly allow this behaviour. This sites ale simply black markeeters. They make profit form it and only "fighting" with it passively. Come on can anyone imagine whole shop or car showroom with bunch of stealed items and owner don't know or do anything about it. Is this bad plan?

Unfortunately, it's pretty widespread. I personally find that the worst kind is those that hijack your brand and design and price lower. A copy sucks, but a copy ON YOUR BRAND sucks more! I know it will get better eventually, but man I hope it's sooner than later.

Rampant. Discouraging. Heinous. Killing my business.

Chris Green has been enabling the thieves. He got caught twice selling those lists. The lazy thieves use those lists to copy and sell designs on MBA. You don't see him participating in the discussions about copycats. He doesn't care. All he wants is to monetize from his Facebook group.

This is the "modus operandi": the lazy thieves buy the lists from people like him. Copy everything (designs, titles, descriptions, tags) and sell them for less. That's been affecting those people that use their talent to create something customers want to buy.

It's not fair.