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Park.io – automating tasks to make $125k per month
- csallen 10y agoFor those getting a 502, I'm working on the server, Elastic Beanstalk didn't scale fast enough >.< Cached version here: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F0QdH3O7YG0J:https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/park-io+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F0QdH3... Or if you refresh a few times, it should come up.
- blaisio 10y agoYeah you usually need to warm it up if you're about to expect a lot of traffic because it can't really deal with that. That really shouldn't be an issue for a site like this though, because you can just host it on a CDN...
- wyager 10y agoTop of HN traffic peaks at maybe 50-100 visitors per second. Unless you're serving a bunch of data, it really shouldn't be an issue. One problem I've run into is (I suspect) running out of sockets because they weren't getting recycled fast enough. This went away when I switched to Snap or Happstack. I used to have to "fix" this by killing and restarting my server every five minutes.
- morganvachon 10y ago> Top of HN traffic peaks at maybe 50-100 visitors per second. That's true, but HN posts tend to go viral on other tech news sites. It's likely the majority of the traffic spikes are not originating on this site's link. I could be wrong though.
- wyager 10y agoThe worst I've ever had was Reddit/HN/Hackaday. I wish I had taken pictures of the Google Analytics report; there was a huge spike when it hit Hackaday, like thousands of loads in a few minutes (maybe a bunch of RSS readers?), leveling off to a more reasonable amount and then falling off gradually as it was displaced from the top of the page. I think I usually get most of my immediate traffic from HN. Twitter is probably the most benign; it usually seems to cause a very slow burn, with little flare-ups over days or weeks.
- mitchty 10y agoDo you see a lot of connections in TIME_WAIT? If so I'd just bump up the ephemeral port range via: /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range (or sysctl -w) But if you're not getting recycling of TIME_WAIT, you can start to change the reuse/recycle attributes (caveat emptor) with: net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse or net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle I know I have been benchmarking a servant app by throwing 2048 concurrent connections at it and just bumping up the ephemeral range has been enough for my needs. I tend to run out of socket FD's or just FD issues a lot quicker than ports. Just a thought, but 50-100requests/second doesn't sound like too big of a deal. I did a quick bench of what i have setup and I get this: # wrk --latency -c 128 -t6 http://10.0.2.15:8080/foo/bar/ Running 10s test @ http://10.0.2.15:8080/foo/bar/ 6 threads and 128 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 3.46ms 5.25ms 137.42ms 90.23% Req/Sec 9.84k 2.13k 19.67k 69.50% Latency Distribution 50% 1.65ms 75% 4.40ms 90% 8.59ms 99% 22.17ms 589624 requests in 10.07s, 476.28MB read Requests/sec: 58560.86 Transfer/sec: 47.30MB Note, this is a static end point so take all these figures with blocks of salt. But by tuning what I said I can have wrk do 2048 concurrent connections reasonably with just a fair increase in overall latency. YMMV
- pushrax 10y agotcp_tw_recycle is not what you want. It is only applicable to outgoing connections (i.e. not people connecting to your server), and even in that case provides little benefit over tcp_tw_reuse. I like pointing people here for the explanation: https://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2014-tcp-time-wait-state-linux.html https://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2014-tcp-time-wait-state-l...
- mitchty 10y agoTrue enough, but its hard to diagnose what people are having problems with with such vague wording. Some apps might have to open connections to a backend, or not, etc... But you're quite right on recycle for outgoing. To be honest I tend to shy away from adjusting either unless I really need to.
- Thaxll 10y agoIf you don't initiate the connection ( no reverse proxy ) you don't have to recycle sockets, only the nofile / iptables settings matter.
- tedmiston 10y agoHow exactly does one go about warming Elastic Beanstalk? I thought part of the value add was Beanstalk making it so you don't have to think about these things for bursts.
- boyter 10y agoContact Amazon. I go through this every time I switch work servers to a new elb or spin up a new service. They are pretty responsive when it comes to this. Just let them know you are expecting X amount of traffic. The new load balances may be a bit better in this regard Hough I haven't tried them yet.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- marcusgarvey 10y agoYou mention that you use a newsletter and weekly blog posts as part of your marketing strategy. Content marketing can be such a time suck. Have you found ways to automate any parts of these processes?
- ca98am79 10y agoI automate the newsletter and tweets, but I actually write the blog posts
- brosky117 10y agoThanks for making IndieHackers! I visit it all the time for inspiration!
- sfeng 10y agoYou might want to think about moving your blog to be a static site. Publish it with something like http://stout.is http://stout.is and it will be much cheaper, easier to maintain and will never go down.
- csallen 10y agoI'm using Ember FastBoot to render the site on the server, so it's not quite static. For some reason it's throwing lots of errors and dropping requests right now, even though it didn't when I launched Indie Hackers on HN last month and had about 3x as many requests/second. Frustrating. Anyway, I'm in the process of just moving it from Elastic Beanstalk to serve it from S3 via CloudFront directly. Waiting for the CloudFront distribution to spin up...
- sprobertson 10y agoGood luck, though it looks like you're making good progress already. Last time I had to wait for CloudFront I sat there thinking "this would be a real pain if I actually needed it now..."
- csallen 10y agoYeah CloudFront took FOREVER to spin up, then it gave me some arcane AccessDenied error that I couldn't easily debug. Ugh.
- blaisio 10y agoIf you use a service like netlify, you can host a static site for free on a CDN. It's actually really convenient because it can build the site automatically whenever you push to a Github repo, and it can automatically setup HTTPS for you with a Let's Encrypt cert. It's a lot easier (and cheaper [free]) than setting up S3 and CloudFront yourself. Github pages can do the same thing - it just has fewer features.
- stockkid 10y agoI hope the server gets back up quickly. Im still getting a no response error in Sydney. I'd love to read a post mortem about the issue sometime in the future.
- intrasight 10y agoHe gives some good advice for indie developers if you manage to get over the "self-promotional" aspects of the article and read to the end.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- afterburner 10y agoEhn, his advice is pretty generic and survivor-bias-y. "Do what you like", "adapt", etc.
- countryqt30 10y agocongratulations :)
- paulpauper 10y agoit also drops considering his 'business' is selling a ridiculously expensive domain back ordering service
- Shank 10y agoPark.io isn't indiehackers.com, and it's currently up.
- asciimo 10y agoHe keeps my attention because he built a $125k/month product.
- csallen 10y agoIndieHackers.com is down, not park.io
- EGreg 10y agoSo this guy is a domain squatter? And all you need to do to become one is add a script? I always assumed there was special access to top tier domain snatchers or they had some sort of high-speed trading thing with a fast uplink.
- Shank 10y agoNo, a squatter buys domains and holds them. Park.io lets you buy a domain that's going to expire before it expires and transfer it to you and charge you if and only if it registers it before it gets sold. Some of these domains (https://app.park.io/domains/view/algorithmic.ly https://app.park.io/domains/view/algorithmic.ly) actually look pretty neat, and I could totally see this being a good market to be in.
- cwilkes 10y agoSo it mostly services domain squatters.
- icebraining 10y agoThe squatter's business model is to buy a lot of domain very cheaply, in the hopes that one sale will cover a lot of bad purchases. Paying $99/domain and having to register each manually (the API is readonly) goes completely against that MO.
- jfoster 10y agoIsn't it the opposite? Rather than buying from the squatters, it encourages people to "wait out" the squatters using Park.io. To me, it seems that damages the squatting business model.
- hueving 10y agoNo, the gp was saying it's a perfect tool for squatters to use.
- Jugurtha 10y ago
- paulpauper 10y agoYou backorder the domain. If we get it and you are the only bidder, you pay $99 and the domain is yours. lol then why bother paying $99. just pick it up from any registrar for $9 after it drops
- cloudjacker 10y agoLiterally any other tld right .dance and .party have been fun lately
- elorant 10y agoBecause you won't be quick enough to order it, unless you start writing some scripts which isn't viable if you only want a couple of domains. The premium is to guarantee peace of mind. I also find it expensive but I can see its merits.
- tobltobs 10y agoThe times when a script was enough are long gone. You wouldn't even get a good ccTLD with a script anymore. You also require direct access to the registry which usually only domain registrars have. However, you might be able to catch one of those new generic TLDs with a script.
- elberto34 10y agoa sucker is born every minute
- junto 10y agoI think the point is that he picks it up before anyone else does in your behalf. He's doing the equivalent of standing in line for you outside the Apple store on iPhone 7 release day and then charging you a premium for his services.
- paulpauper 10y agoyeah but this can be done for much less and if the domain is actually worth anything (it has backlinks, age, and traffic) you will pay for more than $99 since you will be competing with many other bidders. This is a huge industry and you're competing with Russians , eastern Europeans and others who scan for domains thousands of times a minute and check them for rankings and other factors...Very seldom does a good domain drop unnoticed, unlike years ago before this industry took off. Either you pay too much for a worthless domain in or you pay the full price in auction.
- mef 10y agoHis hn profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ca98am79 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ca98am79 Other projects, including what appears to be an initiative to start a new religion? (http://consciousness.io/ http://consciousness.io/) http://humb.ly/projects.html http://humb.ly/projects.html
- ca98am79 10y agoHaha yes - that's my new religion based on consciousness. I thought there needed to be more innovation in religion, so I started one
- muthdra 10y agoThat looks like a branch of Deboísmo.
- proksoup 10y agoAs far as religions go it doesn't seem too bad at first glance. I like it. My current favorite quote about religion is from the pianist Seymour Bernstein (in the latest Documentary about him, from Ethan Hawke, titled "Seymour: An Introduction): "I don't call it god, I call it a spiritual reservoir. Most people don't tap that resource of the god within. What upsets me about religion is that the answers always seem to be apart from us, in the form of a deity and we depend on the deity for salvation, but I firmly believe it is within us." The externality, taking someone's individuality and telling them that it's something apart from them, that they don't control it, is also my largest concern with religion and the thing that needs to innovated on. I think your conciousness.io fits that bill ... Would be curious to hear if my assessment is incorrect though.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- blowski 10y agoGK Chesterton: > That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.
- hmans 10y agoDomain squatting as a service.
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- Tinyyy 10y agoI don't understand how this can survive in the long run - what's stopping someone else from setting up an identical service at lower prices? There is literally no lock in because users can sign up for multiple services and potentially pay a lower price (depends on which one snags the domain). Or is the technology behind that unique?
- pbreit 10y agoIf you think such a thing that easy, you should do it. But it aint.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Tinyyy 10y agoI'm not trying to be dismissive of his impressive project, but from my perspective, or from a business point of view, it doesn't make sense. While I have no doubts that this was nontrivial to create, history has shown that raw technology alone is rarely enough. Isn't trying to gain some form of lock-in an oft repeated point on HN? Also, could you elaborate? I do wish to understand why, if I was wrong.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y agoWhat kind of lock-in do you get from starting a convenience store? A repair shop? A McDonald's franchise? Those can all be quite profitable and provide an excellent living. Simply because competing with him may be "easy," doesn't make the business model any less valid.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jonknee 10y agoThe same could be said for almost any service.
- 10y ago
- 20years 10y agoI don't understand some of the negative comments here. This guy built a million dollar business in a year providing a service that people want to pay for. He did it all on his own with no other co-founders or employees. I say "Congrats!"
- adam12 10y agoThis hasn't happened to me, but it would be pretty crappy to find out you lost your domain because the script that your domain registrant uses to renew your domain name is slower than park.io's script.
- STRiDEX 10y agoYou can renew before the expiration and you can register multiple years at a time.
- icebraining 10y agoIt doesn't work like that: Once your domain has expired, it will be in Auto-Renew Grace Period (for 0-45 days), followed by a 30-day Redemption Grace Period. At the end of the Redemption Grace Period, you will not be able to renew your domain name. Your domain name will be released for registration by third parties. https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/expired-2013-05-03-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/expired-2013-05-03-en For example, daily.sh will be available on their platform on 2016-09-30, but it actually expired back in 2016-07-01.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- victor9000 10y agoI think it has more to do with the fact that we've all wasted countless hours cycling through domain names only to encounter landing pages from squatters like park.io.
- 10y ago
- asdfologist 10y agoJealousy and cognitive dissonance. This guy is more successful than them, so clearly he's done something bad. Welcome to HN: home of the insecure narcissists who like to argue over programming languages, humblebrag about their gifted childhoods, and prove that they're superior to anyone more successful than them.
- dang 10y agoI agree with you on the prevalence of envy in human nature (the real "hn" at work here), but using this community to diss the rest of the community is reliably a marker of a bad comment on Hacker News. Picking "humblebragging" and "prove that they're superior" as the points of dissage seems extra ironic. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576182 and marked it off-topic.
- asdfologist 10y agoSo your solution to these problems that I raised is to sweep them under the rug.
- dang 10y agoYou didn't raise any problems; you postured above others. I don't know if the bottom of the thread counts as 'under the rug', but it's a reasonable place for that sort of comment, since it's so off-topic, common, and generic. (I'm talking about just the second paragraph btw.) Snark is also deprecated. I understand how frustrating HN can sometimes be, and how easy it is to get stuck on a picture of the community as a super-annoying arch-enemy, but it's incongruent to use HN to comment that way, since if you're commenting here, you're as much a part of the community as anyone else is.
- poorman 10y agoNIC.IO now has backordering. In order for park.io to continue being successful with landing and selling premium domains, he must be appraising the value of the domain and his chance of selling it in one of his auctions. Then weighing that against the NIC.io backorder price of 60EUR (67.35USD) + 60EUR registration fee and finally backordering it himself far enough in advance before someone else does (because only 1 backorder can be placed on NIC.IO). Interview here: http://www.domainsherpa.com/mike-carson-parkio-interview/ http://www.domainsherpa.com/mike-carson-parkio-interview/
- throwawaysept 10y agoMike Carson has put park.io up for sale. Asking price is $1.5M. https://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/8340-platform-domain-sales-42k-net-mo https://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/8340-platform-doma...
- mikkom 10y agoYearly revenue is $818,600 profit round $500k which is very nice but if "makes" in the title means "makes profit" as I assumed then the numbers are not correct. Profit of 500k / 12 = 41.7k per month, not 125k.
- ca98am79 10y agoIt is growing fast - avg of last 3 months is $125k. Yes it is revenue, not profit
- shostack 10y agoMight I ask why you are trying to cash out so quickly? Do you not feel the business is sustainable?
- giarc 10y agoEveryone's motivations are different, but seeing as though domains are always going to become available, it seems like a cash cow that requires minimal upkeep.
- nugget 10y agoHe cloned a business model known as drop catching that has been around for a long time with other TLDs most notably for .com domains. If you look at how those markets evolved, there is an initial burst of profitability and then intense competition which leads to commodification and margin compression, which is what I predict will happen here as well. The smartest operators made most of their money by selling off the premium domains they were able to drop catch early, which seems to be what he is doing also (& kudos to him for what seems to be excellent tactical execution) - but the drop catching service itself has steadily less value over time and of course, even in the absence of competition from peers, is wholly dependent on the .io registrar's particular rules regarding drop catching which can change at any time.
- z3t4 10y agothis guy has found the secret recepy for making money: make a service for something where users direcly earn money or spend money. Then automate it in order to scale.
- jondot 10y agoI might get downvoted for this, but here's a story. We just finished picking a brand name, after 2-3 months of intensive work. Being fond of .io's I naivly googled my <brandname>.io, and found that park.io owns it - this happened last week. I immediately sent an email to inquire. We considered the price, and then when I came to buy it today, a week after, the price is tripled. This was a fixed price domain, NOT bid. That's clever price manipulation. Detect when someone wants something, let it sit, and when they're ready - triple the price. Maybe that's a hint for how he made so much money? In any way we'll just do the get<brandname>.io or something like this, as a compromise. Thanks for being a douche, park.io! And then, magically, this is now on HN :)
- ca98am79 10y agoHi sorry this happened - most likely it is owned by a park.io user and they can set the price to whatever they want. Feel free to reach out support@park.io and I will see if I can help
- icantdrive55 10y agoSince you're here, maybe you could help us all understand your business better? 1. You are not getting .io names at a discount from nic.io? No insider deals/information? 2. The Only advantage you have at acquiring an expired domain names at nic.io is your propriatiatry program. A program that is just faster at buying these expiring domains--just faster than your competition? 3. You only know when a .io domain name is due to expire is by looking at the same WHOSIS info we look at? 4. I ask these questions because so many of these domain buying services are just to magical. We tend assume the worst.
- ca98am79 10y agoThanks for thinking park.io is magical! :) We have no special advantage other than our knowledge and technology
- icantdrive55 10y ago
- mbenson2147 10y agoFor some reason the URL doesn't work unless I remove the '-1' at the end.
- imaginenore 10y agoMirror: http://archive.is/BngRx http://archive.is/BngRx
- asdfologist 10y agoFYI dang censored my comment about how HNers react to these stories with a jealous and insecure attitude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576210
- abofh 10y agoRe-read your post - do you _really_ think that's why you were downvoted?
- asdfologist 10y agoI said censored, not downvoted. My original post was at 47 points when it was censored. If it was so bad, then why did so many people agree?
- Stratoscope 10y agoNo one censored your comment. It is right here on the page for anyone to read. Dan merely moved it down on the page, and it's far from the bottom. He even took the time to write two very polite and friendly explanations of the action, even in the face of your hostile attitude toward him.
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576182 and marked it off-topic. Please don't do this again.
- econner 10y agoWhy the .io domains for everything?
- rrtwo 10y agoThe interview mentions parked domains as the major lead generator... are those domain names owned by park.io or by its clients?
- ca98am79 10y agoMostly clients
- Quanttek 10y agoJust to clarify: Why does he call it "backordering"? I mean the domains didn't expire yet or does he park them?
- simple10 10y agoI'm getting S3 access denied errors. Here's the cached version if you need it: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F0QdH3O7YG0J:https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/park-io+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F0QdH3...
- fixxer 10y agoThis couldn't be more click baity if the title involved "this one weird trick".
- roflchoppa 10y agolmao, man i liked when the term "hacker" was directed toward blackhats. This whole "im a hacker" gig is hilarious.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago> lmao, man i liked when the term "hacker" was directed toward blackhats. Well, that usage was incorrect, but I agree that nowadays everyone's calling themselves a hacker of some sort.
- chatmasta 10y agoThis thread is a great example of why not to publicize your revenue or internal systems. At best, you'll get hate and resentment. At worst, you'll get hate, resentment, and a new competitor.
- notgood 10y agoPretty sure it already had a lot of hate before this article even existed.
- csallen 10y agoI disagree. Lots of the founders behind companies who've shared on Indie Hackers have reached out to me with good stories about getting more users, positive feedback, relationships, etc. And I know a few people personally who've given Park.io their business in the past few days, too. Every community is different. Park.io received nothing but love on Twitter earlier this weekend (https://twitter.com/IndieHackers/status/779330003829944320 https://twitter.com/IndieHackers/status/779330003829944320). The HN crowd is particularly cynical and prone to outrage/judgment in the comment section. I got a similar response when I launched Indie Hackers itself in August. But despite some negative comments, most visitors loved it and 99% of the feedback I've gotten since then has been positive.
- bambax 10y agoSlightlyy OT and probably naïve: what is the attractiveness of the .io TLD? If the .com isn't available, why is .io more desirable than any other? Is there a hard reason or is .io just fashionable?
- vram22 10y agoGuessing here, but I think it's just fashionable. Has been for a few years, from what I've been seeing. zato.io was one of the first I noticed - a Python ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), got to know the founder, chatted a bit. That was a few years ago. Geek chic, so to speak. Probably because of the term I/O (Input/Output) being a tech term - a signalling mechanism to other geeks, maybe - as in: I am a geek, come do biz with me. Playing psychologist here, but hey, it's fun to ...
- cjhanks 10y agoI find it shocking that you would post on HN; "Hey guys, I make $125k/mo making other peoples lives harder". Given the way your current infrastructure is configured (vulnerabilities and all)... somebody could probably cost you ~$30-70k/mo in AWS resource utilization at a cost of ~$600/mo. The moment you park on the domain of someone who shares your internet ethics, that will be an interesting day for you.
- csallen 10y agoHow is it unethical to provide a platform that allows people get domains that they'd otherwise have almost no chance of getting?
- pimlottc 10y agoIf park.io hadn't bought it, someone else would have. So how does the park.io client deserve it any more than that person?
- csallen 10y agoDepends on your definition of "deserve". With domain names, the system is pretty clearly first-come, first-served. If Park.io didn't get domain name X, then the next fastest person would get it, and so forth. Many other systems are similar: renting apartments, claiming land, patents, trademarks, etc. Obviously, first-come, first-served doesn't ensure that a resource goes to the people who would use it "best". But what system does? Park.io gives the average person an actual chance to win the race for a .io domain -- a chance they otherwise probably wouldn't have -- so I'd rather live in a world with Park.io than without it.
- dba7dba 10y agoReading this article reminds me of a story that got me on the path of Linux, open source and away from Windows career path years ago. I was starting out my IT career as a Windows tech at a company. One guy that was obviously smart, Linux literate, and given a lot of responsibility at the company mentioned that he had scripted a tool to check constantly if a domain that he wanted became available or not. He wanted to make sure he grabbed it as soon as it became available. It was the first example I saw of someone automating something with some scripting. Coming from Windows side, I was like what~~? Scripting can do that? This was when Yahoo was the king. (I'm not THAT old). The thing is this kind of scripting is NOT new. It was done before by others. But with proper execution, park.io is able to generate a million dollar a year. Good for him.
- obisw4n 10y agoDoh.. this guy recently came to me and swooped an up .io I owned. I gave it to him for what I paid for it thinking it was just an individual, should of asked for more lol. /me facepalms
- Tech1 10y agoHe paid me $500 for a two letter .io I owned. I hope you got market value!
- thinkMOAR 10y ago"so I wrote a script that checked the domain every second and sent me an email if it was available." Whats the use of checking it _every second_ if you still need to manually act upon your email?
- jessaustin 10y agoDon't you check your email every second?
- pearjuice 10y agoThat's what he thought, so he build park.io. Did you finish reading the article?
- thinkMOAR 10y agoYes and it quickly sidetracks to other things that the parts that are actually of interest, company goals etc. Not so much about automating tasks as the title would suggest.
- threesixandnine 10y agoAll this is pretty funny to all dropcatching people around the world if he really said it. If you act upon email the domain is gone.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- white-flame 10y agoHis main advice is to just "flow" on your own natural interests and success will come. The problem is that many people's interests have zero business potential. As technical people, we tend to have pipe dreams about what computers could achieve. Lone wolf AI directions, weird functional programming styles, utilities based on incredibly niche processing, continuing retro computing interests, custom OSes, etc. Sure, some people have interests that happen to align with a commercially exploitable audience, but "pursue your interest" is not a globally applicable direction to recommend starting a business venture. Flexibility within your interest will not help you swing a profit if your interest isn't widely shared.
- 6DM 10y agoI still think it's a great starting point. You may find that it's hard to get info about custom OSes and after a year decide to sell a book with all the information you found. The point is keep an eye out for problems you run into, instead of making one up. Usually if you find it interesting, someone else will too. Plus it makes it easier to justify spending the hours necessary turning it into a product.
- mankash666 10y agoRemember when ticketmaster and their ilk bought, ahem bot, tickets within seconds of release, and then sold it to you at inflated prices. all while marketing it as a service to humanity? Well, nothing different in this business plan either. Automating price gouging and domain squatting might be commercially viable and legal, but it isn't the right thing to do!