You'll probably find your 50-60% drop is for a reason other than duplicate content on another site.

Just by having the same content as your other site, wouldn't have caused as much of a change as that.

Might have been the case if you were doubling the content up on the same site. So I would look at any changes you made up to the time your traffic started to drop off.

Or put it down to the big "G" playing their usual arsey games.

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I believe in situations where duplicate is considered by Google, the page which published the content first is given the consideration. But this is a bit different where both pages are coming from the same person. Google has a way of knowing that both content belongs to one person, maybe through IP address, phone number etc.

Hard to say where your traffic drop came from.

I don't know if anyone really knows about duplicate content, I side with the folks who say that Google won't go out an penalise you but one site with the content gets the love and the other(s) don't. Sounds fair.

My personal approach to content is a use once policy - one piece of content on one site...once.

That said...an image and product description are going to be much the same across sites. If I write a book and have that on a dozen book sites I'm probably using the same images and similar descriptions.

In that situation I'm relying on the traffic of the host sites (like Amazon) and my own advertising to send traffic...not relying on Google organic results.

Maybe try one or both of these:

- unique description on your own site. Like a paragraph that gives a little back story / inspiration behind...I don't have any specifics for you so I am making stuff up here

- if you don't already do some blogging on your site. Might be able to attract some people then offer your products...

Maybe not totally useful advice, I'm sure if you put your website URL here someone might have some more actionable advice....

Thanks everyone. Just to be clear I don't own both sites. The other site is Zazzle (like CafePress) and they had all the products first - just because I uploaded them there first then I decided to make my own site later.

Also, Zazzle has an affiliate program so I am a member of that and I link to them from every page of my site. And then I have the same descriptions that they have so even though I am the original designer I guess my site looks like an just another affiliate site?

That sounds good, I think I should do something like that. I feel so discouraged.

Should I get rid of the affiliate store and try to make my own product images with my own descriptions? But I would still have to link to Zazzle on every page in order to sell anything.

Don't get discouraged! I know it's tough sometimes but you're doing stuff and making it happen...I'm sure many here on the forum applaud you for that.

Are you getting sales through Zazzle? I mean do people end up there without oming from you or your website and find your stuff and buy?

Do you mind sharing your URL? No problem if you don't but I think more ideas will come with a little more to work with.

My advice would be to not do anything drastic...yet...work on small tweaks to what you are already doing. See the results and take more action based on that.

Adding some extra content to your site listings isn't going to hurt and hopefully is pretty quick. The traffic drop isn't likely to be duplicate content but something unique isn't a bad thing.

As for links to Zazzle and what options are there...that probably requires a quick look at your website.

Lot's of folks use a third party site to sell their stuff from their blog / website so your not alone there.

Zazzle doesn't have much text on their product pages (example) so you have nothing to worry about, create unique page titles, single <h1> (per page) & image alt-text. Build relevant internal/external links.

well, there may be chance that you got nailed by the Google change in algorithm as far as I know content duplicity might be the reason why. But i would also stress you on checking for the spammy back links as major time it also results in drop in the rankings as well as the traffic.

I do not think that duplicate content is the issue here why you dropped traffic. Yo need to analyze your on-page SEO efforts particularly your content. Try to post more content on your site other than just putting products in your pages.

Thank you for that! It's hard.

Yes, I'm getting several hundred sales per month and I wanted to try and increase it with a site of my own. I have a facebook, twitter, and pinterest. Facebook is good as far as collecting fans and interactions but no sales, twitter and pinterest are dead so far.

I've read all these posts, thanks everyone, this forum has been so helpful to me!

And I thought all night about what to do, I won't do anything drastic and it is probably not the duplicate content like you guys said, so what I will do is try and find ways to write about and demonstrate with images how people can use my products.

For example I could do an article about "How to throw a undersea theme birthday party" or something like that. Then sell all my stickers, invites, envelopes, wrapping paper, cake toppers, and so on.

Thanks again all!