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Most people have crap printers and don't actually have any experience with one that works well, so for them the $10 cloned hot-end is a good one because it's cheap and they don't know any better. They are swimming in a cesspool of cheap stuff that barely works

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the_digital_dentist
The problem here is that people are unable to distinguish between quality goods and stuff that isn't when it looks the same. That's OK for handbags or scarves or something that doesn't have to function precisely, but in a 3D printer, ALL the parts have to work properly. Most people have crap printers and don't actually have any experience with one that works well, so for them the $10 cloned hot-end is a good one because it's cheap and they don't know any better. They are swimming in a cesspool of cheap stuff that barely works. They're used to unclogging the hot-end after every print and they think it's normal just like they thought it was normal to reboot Windows 98 (and XP) every hour or so to keep it working.

There's no guarantee that a "genuine original" product is "all that and a bag of chips". I bought a budaschnozzle (a design as ridiculous as its name!!) a couple years ago because people said it was great. After I received it I realized it was one of the dumbest hot-end designs ever. Heatsink fins on a teflon tube? Wood parts right next to a heater that runs >200C? Clearly the designer had no idea what they were doing. The lesson I learned was that you can't trust most reviews and you can't trust the designers to know what they are doing. You have to educate yourself and use your own critical eye to determine what's good and what's not.

If you're making hot-ends that sell for $60, you're not going to sell them to any of the vast majority of people who refuse to pay more than $300 for a printer. If you thought you were, your business plan is flawed. The Chinese cloners and kit makers figured out that people care about cost more than they care about whether the thing works and more than they care about the time they're going to waste trying to make chicken salad (a good 3D print) out of chicken shit (a $300 printer).

If you designed a hot-end that sells for $60 and you're whining about the cheap clones stealing your business, you are charging too much and/or you are not marketing it properly and educating 3D printing enthusiasts about why your hot-end is better than the cheap knock-offs. If you can't get your price down, quit trying to sell the part to people who buy $300 printers. You can't play in that space. You have to go higher end, and target the much smaller market of people/companies who spend $1000 and up for a printer. Tell them about quality of the parts, about the better print quality, about increased reliability, and after purchase support, then make sure you deliver on all the promises. Be forewarned, those people tend to be very critical...