joint effort website

[Layne]

a couple of friends and I have been working on trying to start up a small hobbie business of soaping.
licensed, incorperated, did name search, fictitious named, registered domain name, got web hosting for $1.00 a month. everything went fine so far.
no idea how to do website though. one of my friends said she used to so she worked on it. finally got it up and running. big yay on that.
ran across another site with almost the same name, bummer.
off by 1 letter. the other never came up while doing fictitious name searchs or domain name searchs. but when we did a web search for ours it popped up. they have a few cutesy soaps shapes an seem a little more comercial-ish.
so we have some competition in our own state with almost our own name.
so we just hope our soap looks, smells and works better.

 

[IanT]

a dollar a month for hosting!?!?!?! where!?!?!

 

[Layne]

a dollar a month for hosting!?!?!?! where!?!?!

http://www.rosebumhosting.com/

 

[JenniferSews]

If you go to www.godaddy.com and request to buy their name, you can view the owner if they haven't made it private. Then you can see if they've been around longer than you. If they have, I would save yourself the headache and change your name. If they were around first they have a legal right to that name, even if it's a little different, since you're selling the same or similar products. If they haven't been around as long then I'd start by nicely emailing them and asking them to change their name. If not a lawyer can send a cease and desist letter for you without much trouble or money. Good luck, I know it stinks. A couple of friends went through similar situations and I know how stressful it can get!