I have a question. A serious question. It seems like I’m seeing more of
my designs being copied and shared in file share groups and I come
across them daily. Theft and morals aside. I’m trying to understand WHY
someone would want to share a file they paid for? Or even why they would
share one they copied for their own personal use? This is already a
very saturated market, why would you SHARE with your competitors? If you
bought a file, you now did something that someone else wasn’t willing
to do. Therefore, YOU will stand out. By sharing that file… and in
most cases in groups of 20k+ members… YOU just CREATED competition!
Even if you created your own “version” and didn’t pay for the design…
by sharing it with others… you now just ELIMINATED your own
uniqueness!

I do understand giving and sharing as I really try to
do a lot of it myself. But what I don’t understand is in business, why
you would share your work with other businesses? Especially in large
groups where you do not know their intention.

If you’re doing it
out of the goodness of your heart, I commend you and I love your
spirit. However, remember that copying a design and sharing it with 20k
people literally just stole money from the original designer. You may be
doing it out of good will, but the punch in the gut is to the original
creator that worked on it for many hours, when all you did was find
similar fonts, made your own version, and shared it. It may have taken
you 15 minutes to recreate… but that’s because hours of work had
already been done for you. And that is the person you stole from in
order to do “something nice.”

Last I checked, Tiffany’s does not
share items they curate with other stores. When I first started I would
use the common fonts from places like dafont but now I spend time,
energy and (lots of) money finding commercial use fonts that cannot be
found for free at all. My whole purpose in that is trying to be hard to
replicate. As soon as I see a font become well known… I move on to
another one I enjoy. I do this on purpose to stand out. Which is why
these file share groups just confuse me. You should want to stand out
too!

I promise I’m not writing this out of anger. Annoyance to a
degree, but not anger. Most of you know that my vision for MY business
is to help you grow in YOUR business, so believe me when I say I’m just
trying to understand. My view with all these file sharing groups… is
that not only are you sitting in a stagnant pool with people all using
the same designs that “everyone has” and that “anyone can do,” but
you’re also limiting your own potential to stand out!!!

Obviously
my business is designing and I would love for you to buy my files. I
would also love for YOU to MAKE MONEY from my files on your completed
products! I know this is the heart of many designers as well. And it
just doesn’t make sense to me to steal from the person whose PURPOSE is
to help YOU succeed.

In summary:

This is Mary. Mary found
a file she likes. Mary doesn’t want to buy it so she makes her own.
Mary is happy that people like the file and want it for themselves. Mary
then shares it in a group of 75,000 people, and takes credit for it and
never acknowledges the original creator.

Don’t be like Mary.

This is Susie. Susie found a file she likes and decides that her time
to recreate and money to buy commercial use for fonts is worth more than
the $3 that the file costs. Susie buys the file and decides to share
her finished product with a group of 75,000 people. People ask for the
file. Susie directs them to where she purchased the file so they can
purchase it for themselves.

Be like Susie.

But now let’s meet Jill.

This
is Jill. Jill spends hours searching for a design and finally sees a
design she likes. Jill buys it. Jill does not like to show her work
because she does not want her competitors to get on her trail. Jill does
not speak of HoopMama because she wants to keep her tucked away with
the Halloween candy she’s hiding from the kids. But Jill also knows
right from wrong and speaks up when she sees designs being shared or
copied illegally.

It’s totally okay to be like Jill too. We like Jill.

But today… I had to share my “be like Susie” shirt because you Susie’s make my day every day!!!

(And I promise the duck lips are just to mimic the mock-up of the
little girl going around. I promise I don’t take selfies like this