a few months back i made the sad mistake of not buying the .com for a site i own. now i've gotten business cards done with my current .net extension. and come to find out i have a .com rival. any advice one can give in such a situation. i've emailed the owner for that site with a offer to buy the site from them. anything else i can do?
If your domain name/site name could reasonably be considered a trademark (doesn't necessarily need to be registered as long as you can prove first usage etc) then you could have grounds for lodging a complaint with ICANN - refer to the posts regarding domain names and trademarks in the legal forum for more info on whether your domain could be considered a trademark. Other than that, your best bet is to just work your ass off to ensure you perform better in SERPs etc than he does. The .com extension isn't a guarantee that he'll take your traffic; and without effort on his part will only likely attract type-ins; however if you've circulated business cards which you expect people to use containing your direct address then it shouldn't be an issue. Might be worth getting in early to receive notifications on when/if the domain is dropped to ensure you don't miss out again in the future if you're unsuccessful in acquiring the domain from its current owner.
If you are providing same content, then you need to "enhance" watever your content deals with. Have good content and do massive advertising. If people will like your site, you will get a lot of backlinks, thus a boost in your page rank. Well, it is a long term tweak. You will not see the result right now. By doing this you will get listed first on search engines. Thus outrunning the rival
thanx for the info also how or where would i go about filing a complaint with icann. my site has been up since last yr november, even has a pagerank unlike theres also they do graphic design same as i do.
he is allowed to own and use it as long as his business is not in the same "business category" as yours, or as long as he doesn't falsely associate with or imitate you.
It's a tough case if the domain is clearly for a particular niche. I see the .com name was just registered at the end of last month, but ICANN probably still won't make them turn over the domain.
the owners for it have yet to reply to the email i sent yesterday. and i'm not sure about how to go about the whole ICANN thing