OK, hopefully somebody has dealt with this in the past and can lend some advice. We are in an arena that is filled with slime (credit repair). I made the decision to enter this arena after a few years of retirement for a few reasons.

1. Massive Market - Nearly 85% of Americans have bad credit.
2. The competitors are all slime (literally)- I saw this as an opportunity to bring to the market an ethical, educational service as I do have experience in this. Furthermore, the FTC is cracking down on unethical companies. I kind of took the stance of "we'll be the last man standing" approach.
3. To an extent ,it's working. Our reputation is getting there, we've been called to do a few magazine and newspaper articles etc. however, I underestimated the grip the major player has on the market.

Now, I fancy myself as a pretty good networker, but that was before the net became so big. The other competitor just completely owns the net. They have hundreds and hundreds of BBB Complaints, several federal lawsuits and the list goes on and on.

But they are so big, they have the money to just buy tens of thousands of links to bury any bad press on the net. Anytime I see negative press, its only a matter of weeks before its 20 pages deep on Google.

I'm not one to bash another company - I think it's totally unprofessional, but overcoming the massive checkbook they have is proving to be a tougher task then I anticipated.

Any past experiences, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.