Stealing Your Website Business Idea

"I am creating a website. While I want people to know about it, I don't want someone stealing my idea before I'm finished. I would like input from likely users and thought by posting a note on an appropriate news groups I could get some quality feedback. Would this cause me to lose my niche? Should I be concerned about this since the site will be going live in the next few months? Or should I just wait until it's ready to go?" -- Ian Lane

In my experience, good ideas by themselves are "a dime a dozen." What makes a great site is the combination of (1) a good idea, (2) excellent execution, and (3) top customer care. The dot-com "rah-rah" days are over. Very few companies are prepared to invest the time, money, care, and detail into copying your idea and beating you to the marketplace -- and thrown-together sites are pretty easy to spot.

Having said that, I wouldn't start advertising the site in a news group yet. Rather, personally invite a few of the news group posters who seem wise and responsible to visit and give you feedback. You can place a robot.txt file in your root directory to keep search engines from indexing your site until you're ready. http://www.brown.edu/webmaster/search/robotexclusion.html

Of course, once you go live there's nothing to stop someone from taking your idea and improving upon it, so never be satisfied. Continue to improve your own site -- even if there are no apparent competitors. The better your site, the deeper your content, the easier your sales process, and the more caring your customer service, it'll be that much harder for any competitor to rise to your level of excellence. I wish you every success with your idea!