Youve spent the time and effort to create a site with rich content that provides real value to your visitors. You have a special environment and niche, and a name that is getting known in your industry or by your user groups. All of a sudden your site traffic is slowing. Your affiliate commissions arent grinding to a halt, but theyre slowing also.

What can you do? Check Whois to see if another site has registered a name thats close to yours, perhaps in an attempt to do business based upon your reputation. If this is so, check with the affiliate programs youre enrolled in to see if the offender is registered. If so, register a formal complaint, and provide them with documentation. Also contact ICANN and register a formal complaint. If your site is karlysquilts.com and someone has recently put up karrleysquilts.com, with many of your affiliates, every time someone makes the typo of an extra r your reputation is on the line, and you stand to lose a commission. Conversely, if they were there first, you didnt realize it, and you can see that theyre a legitimate business, you should quickly contact them to discuss the situation. Worst case is that you may find you have to bow out if it appears that you are unintentionally misrepresenting them.

How can you reduce the possibility of such a situation? Before you register a site name, research to see if a trademark for a name is registered by the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS). If not, register all possible versions of your name, including common misspellings and .net, .org, .biz etc., and redirect them to your active site. Make it a regular practice to check for misspellings or permutations of your name under new domains, such as .tv.