You Know You've Made It When.

Over the past year I have been working very hard - building a brand. My website is an adult-interest website and is now getting over 60,000 page views a month! I have surpassed all of the major players in my niche and rank #1 for pretty much all related terms.

Here's the problem. I have been successful enough to get the attention of scammers :(

A feature of my website is a free, anonymous, personals section which garners a lot of traffic. Over the past few weeks I have been getting emails via my contact form from users reporting X ad as being a scammer - they are looking for money (most specifically Amazon gift cards) in exchange for "services". I figure I must have made the big time if scammers think my site is worth working.

But the most frustrating thing happened this week - someone has gone and created kik groups (kik is an anonymous messaging app/service) and they are using my brand name in their group names. They even had the audacity to contact me and ask me to promote their groups as the 'official' groups for my website/brand.

Has anyone else had anything similar where people have started using their brand? I would really love any advice on what I should do. It has taken me a long time to build the trust of my readers and I don't want someone else capitalizing on my hard work.

PS - I have contacted kik already and asked them to remove the groups, and I have also responded to the offender and asked them to stop using my brand. (However, they think that I have 'attitude' for not wanting the groups branded)

Sigh.

Nancy