You just released your new product and your followers are loving it! Your notifications are blowing up from the likes, comments and shares. You respond to each comment, thanking people for their kind words of encouragement, answering questions and processing orders.

The next one reads:

“@Susie, this is super cute!!! Can you make one for me?”

And just like that, the creative high of your “baby” making a successful entrance to the market comes to a screeching halt. You are not Susie. Don’t they understand how many months it took to develop this? How about the number of “trials” that now call the bottom of the round file “home?” You’ve priced this as competitively as possible, and someone wants it cheaper?

Craftsmen, I get it! You cannot allow situations like this to consume your thoughts though, because they morph you into a bitter, uncreative person. I know, it has happened to me. You don’t have to take it lying down though. Here are a few things you can do.

1. Educate your followers as part of your social media plan. Explain how hard you work to create original, affordable pieces for them and what it does to your business when those ideas are “ripped off.”

2. Continue creating, so by the time your work is copied, you have already released “the next big thing.”

3. “Block” the people who tag Susie to make it cheaper. I rarely block anyone, but this behavior can be a virus. Kill it at the source.

4. Educate people who tag you on other posts, asking you to make a copy of someone else’s work. Tell them that although you are flattered to be thought of, you will not be re-making this piece. You respect the original maker and yourself too much to do that.

Create a culture that loves and respects all art and the artists who make it.