Well boys and girls.. It has happened again. Another competitor has ripped off my creatives / content. It's funny to see this happened because the domain development niche is tiny. There isn't that many developers out there to begin with. I can count them all on my fingers. Hell, I would only need my right hand because there isn't even five real domain mass development operations out there. Dumb move by Michael Sumner or whoever is responsible over there.
So what content did they steal? What did they rip off from me??! Various creatives / ideas as far as their domain development affiliate program goes. Worst part? They ripped off the "Terms and Conditions" agreement. Word for word, straight copy and pasted it. They only added a paragraph or two and replaced my url with theirs. Pure genius. Take a look at theirs and mine.
When we launched the Maxxximize service over a year ago, me and my partner Emil went looking for a good lawyer, who specifically specialized in the adult biz and who could put together legal agreements for our service that would hold up well just about anywhere since our clients are from all over the world. So we hired one of the best adult lawyers in the biz and he put together for us about half a dozen various agreements that were custom. The "Terms and Conditions" one used on Maxxximize.com services sign-up is one of them.
I am using it for the Domain Mass Development affiliate program as well. Now, we paid the lawyer thousands of dollars to get this taken care of and it was 100% custom. Can't really be a cheap ass when it comes to this stuff. So we launched the DomainMassDevelopment.com new website and affiliate program a month ago. A week later, MiniSites.com launches their affiliate program... Their description is similar to ours. Their Terms and Conditions = OURS. Uhh?!
Seriously... Why would you do that? I know.. They probably thought the one we used was a "standard" $49.95 one we purchased off of one the many legal documents sites that sell you a ready-made template. So they just saved $49.95 by copy and pasting ours for their own affiliate program... Many webmasters do this of course and it's nothing new. Not a bad idea right? Except the fact that it wasn't. How silly do they feel? How embarrassing must this be?! Ripping off your competitors content... BAD BAD! Especially legal stuff. WOW!
Look, I was never planning to do a post about Michael Sumner or MiniSites.com because I really do have more important things to take care of and over a dozen various other businesses to run. I don't really like to give plugs to my competition too much either. It simply doesn't make sense but in this case I had to make an exception and go on record. I've been meaning to write about it for a while now.. I found the time and finally here it is. The cold hard facts.
This wasn't the first time a competitor has ripped off my works. Nope. I posted up another observation a little over a month ago titled You know you've made it when one of your competitors copies you word for word where I made my case and things took care of themselves because they always do. I didn't reveal the website. I didn't reveal who was behind it. But I did do what needed to be done. As you can see, the last comment on that page was submitted by Brian Benko of NoParking.com which was the site I was referring to.
Brian posted "Good Morning Mike - I am going to take the pages down but understand I have been doing this and pitching the same pitch a lot longer than your organization. Maybe someday you can make time for me on the telephone. Respectfully, Brian"
That wasn't really an "apology" or anything like that, but as I wrote in the article.. I wasn't losing any sleep over this stuff while it was going on. I wasn't holding my breathe either once I posted the observational post. I could care less whether he apologized or not. He took down the entire NoParking.com site though. He can now focus on running NeverPark.com which is similar to WhyPark. I'll give him a plug.. Why not? At least he had the courage to step forward, take some responsibility and post something at the end of the day.
Michael Sumner is a very opinionated person and one who doesn't hold back as I am sure many already know. The guy has a talent for talk talk talk. From various e-mail exchanges I had with him recently I quickly figured that the guy was a little out of it. I tried to be nice to him because that is just how I am. Even with competitors, I try to get along. I am very positive and I try to avoid all the drama and other bullshit. It is simply not worth it. Waste of time...
Well, the guy kept busting my balls for no reason and making wise ass remarks.. Kept chipping away. I mean, who the hell does he think he is? What gives him the right to run his mouth. He probably thinks that he is a domain development god or something. Why?! Because he has a cool domain and because they have been able to develop a few hundred minisites over the past few month's. Wow.. Look! We develop HUNDREDS of sites WEEKLY with DomainMassDevelopment.com and our client base is much larger than yours.
It's rather silly for him to think that he can pop up one day outta nowhere and within a few month's shoot straight to the top by trashing everybody else along the way. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way... Funny line from one of the e-mails that he sent my way a week ago "I'm only telling you this because, to be honest, I don't really see you as competition." which is where he sent over lots of advice and other bullshit.. LOL! There was lots of other insults and cheap shots in there... But I let him go on and on. Heh..
"It's not like you've got the Coke formula or something, doesn't even seem all that great TBH."
"I'm not really worried about you or Rick, we have the brand, and domainers respect that more than any of your bullshit hype or Rick's "v2".
"Why do you think we're bagging clients with domains like Motorsports.com.... and you're getting the leftover scraps?"
"Yea, I'm really worried about getting taken down by the longest brand in the domain space... DomainMassDevelopment.com."
My last e-mail response to him was this:
"We're the guys doing all of the behind the scenes stuff for the most successful affiliate marketers, competitive webmasters and largest domain portoflio holders in the world... Not out for fame or glory like some people are in this biz. It's nice that you think that you are #1 after a few month's in this business and got it in your head. Every businessman should think so about their biz operation, so I don't blame you. Keep going at it man... You seem to know it all, so I don't need to do a 10 page review of the service like I did with Rick Latona which put him in the right direction and I am sure business is now better than ever before since he has applied all of my feedback to their new sites being launched."
Michael Sumner is very arrogant as you can see. You thought my personality was pretty bad and out of control? Wait til' you deal with this Michael Sumner character. Totally unprofessional and pretty ruthless. Only reason I was nice to him in the first place really was because of his "affiliation" with Nat Cohen who is one of the nicest guys in the domain business who has been around for over a decade now and is well respected. I don't think anybody would give two shits about Michael Sumner or his minisite development operation to begin with if it wasn't for the Nat Cohen connection...and everybody already knows that.
They are both from the DC area so must know each other since the domainer space is small but I honestly don't even think that Nat is involved in this minisites.com operation. Why would he be? Nat Cohen makes 7 figures per year from domain sales and his his other 2000+ parked premium domains + developed websites. Why would a guy like that get into the service biz.. To make $50 or $100 on an order of one mini-site and have to share those profits with the others involved with the MiniSites.com operation?Makes no sense.
I've been asking around the past week or so about who exactly is this Michael Sumner character and nobody knows too much about him. Look.. I've been following the domain industry closely since 2003 and up to a few month's I never seen him anywhere or heard much. I asked other people who know-it-all and they had absolutely nothing to share about Michael Sumner. So, it's really not surprising to me personally to see him act the way he acts and conduct business the way he does. He is totally clueless. He is in his own little world.
Hell, I don't even know if he has any service provider background. Probably not... Big surprise?!? Not really. So... What happens next? Well, tomorrow is Monday which is the highest traffic day on WannaDevelop.com so over 1,500 visitors will read this article. Then over the course of the week at least another 5,000 people will read it and find out just what type of a guy Michael Sumner really is and how unprofessional the mastermind behind MiniSites.com conducts himself with others.
I'm sorry for making this kind of long but I just wanted to put all the facts out there and I tried to cram it all into just one post instead of doing a series. This is the one and only time I will write about Michael Sumner and MiniSites.com --- I never even planned to, but he was asking for it. It needed to be done. What is the lesson to be learned from all of this? Well... You don't need me to tell you it. If you already read this entire article. You should already know.
Observations at WannaDevelop.com
02/23/2010: Dozens of Amazon affiliate stores for sale.. Developed by DomainMassDevelopment.com 01/11/2010: Wanna be part-owner of DomainState.com with myself and a few others? Ok, read this now... 11/02/2009: FS gets it on with WP... It's about time, no??!?! 08/24/2009: If all else fails... Who is gonna pay the bills?!! 08/22/2009: Frank Schilling has the winning formula $$$$$$
