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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

> In fact, the business I started 4 years ago, which is still profitable today, came from an idea I saw in Wickedfire. Only, all of the people in the forum that tried it got banned because they wanted to do it the scammy way..and I built it like a real business and gave people real value (and still do).

What was that original idea?

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haha

What's funny? You can't talk about your business?

The poster is probably being deliberately vague, because the barrier to entry in this industry is low.

If you have something that works and share it with the world, you'll quickly find yourself with 1000 competitors. They'll probably be poor competitors, but because of the nature of SEO, they just might outrank you for no good reason at all.

Or the competition might bid up (at their loss, but yours too) whatever you need as inputs (like traffic sources).

Why would I want to give anyone even a hint of my profitable niche?

Many believe that ideas are worthless, but I don't. Especially on a business/startup forum. I really don't want the competition.

In that case, I really hope you got domain privacy in tact.

I thought you practically demonstrated that ideas are worthless unless someone executes them properly. The idea you executed was an old and tested one, but it kept failing due to scammy executions. You gave it a proper execution and voila!

To me, This sort of thing doesn't demonstrate their is value in an idea, rather it demonstrates the value of asymmetric information.

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