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Is stealing from competitors immoral?
We got our first hundred customers by tapping into our competitors traffic & redirecting it to our site.
It’s difficult to create a traffic stream when you’re just starting out. It’s easier to tap into existing streams and redirect some of it.
– Was this immoral?
– What other ways to get many customers in the early days do you know?
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1 Reply
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If you mean bidding on competitors brand name, people do that all the time. Pretty normal. You can also bid on research and product feature type keywords.
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If they are your competitor then it is only natural for you to compete for market share. As long as you didn’t use unethical practices to aquire them you are fine.
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If you put a redirect on the site or messed with it then it is highly illegal, if you targeted branded keywords then that is standard procedure.
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Would you want someone to do it to you? If so, then by all means. If not, well, I think you have your answer.
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Your question is vague. How did you redirect this traffic?
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Sure it is. However, you gotta play too.
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It’s shady to run ads and pretend to be them.
Usually running ads on a competitor doesn’t lead to revenue. It’s just a waste of money.
Unless you’re hacking their site, or bought a fake domain name to impersonate them.
If you bought their domain because they forgot to renew, that’s still shady.
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“Tapping into our competitor traffic & redirecting it to our site” is a very grand way of saying we brand bid.
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Its moral if you need the income to feed your kids
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“competitors traffic” what do mean? The brands they carry and their brand competitor name terms?
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Not immoral to bid on their names if that’s what you’re doing. Not usually the best strategy for paid ads in my experience. If you’re doing anything else maybe reconsider.
I’m a believer in originality and the long game, however.
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Not immoral, though not long term sustainable. Users will not be happy you tricked them if your offer is not better than the original.
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Its a game you should be careful of playing. You can do it to them, they can do the same thing to you.
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I’d say that’s a grey area. While it’s clever, it’s questionable ethics. Instead, focus on creating unique value props and targeting underserved markets. It’s harder, but more sustainable in the long run.
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Definitely not immoral but not a long term solution because your cost will keep going up. I learned through my current company that the best thing to do is have a gentleman’s agreement with major competitors. Agree to not bid on each other’s brand names in order to keep the bidding wars at bay. I was surprised how well this worked in my industry.
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