PIRACYKILLS
Most people who read my blog and know me for the development of Bear Blog are surprised to learn that I have another software project in the art and design space. It's called JustSketchMe and is a 3D modelling tool for artists to conceptualise their artwork before putting pencil to paper.
It's a very niche tool (and requires some serious explanation to some non-illustrators involving a wooden mannequin and me doing some dramatic poses), however when provided as a freemium tool to the global population of artists, it's quite well used.
Similar to Bear, I make it free to everyone, with the development being funded through a "pro" tier. Conversely, since it is a standalone app it has a bit of a weakness, which is what this post is about.
I noticed, back in 2021, that when Googling "justsketchme" the top 3 autocompletes were "justsketchme crack", "justsketchme pro cracked", and "justsketchme apk". On writing this post, I checked that this still holds true, and it's fairly similar 4 years later.
The meaning of this is obvious. A lot of people are trying to pirate JustSketchMe. However, instead of feeling frustrated (okay, I did feel a bit frustrated at first) I had a bright idea to turn this apparent negative into a positive.
I created two pages with the following titles and the appropriate subtitles to get indexed as a pirate-able version of JustSketchMe:
These pages rank as the first result on Google for the relevant search terms. Then on the page itself I tongue-in-cheek call out the potential pirate. I then acknowledge that we're in financially trying times and give them a discount code.
And you know what?
That discount code is the most used discount code on JustSketchMe! By far! No YouTube sponsor, nor Black Friday special even comes close.
In some ways this is taking advantage of a good search term. In others it's showing empathy and adding delight, creating a positive incentive to purchase to someone who otherwise wouldn't have.
The discount code is PIRACYKILLS. I'll leave it active for a while. 👮🏻♂️