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Comment by meterplech | Hacker News Reader

I think the point was successful short term flips don't add as much value as growing a business over a long time. Doesn't create jobs or likely new technologies. Not to take anything away from this- it's a neat idea, and always impressive to have such viral use. But, I guess OP just means this shouldn't be the final goal for HN users.

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Everybody has different 'final goals', when you're in college and you hit a thing like this you can let it distract you and you might run after something that has limited life-span after all, and mess up your chances of completing your education.

If everybody that's in college today manages to score one like this I'd be one happy fellow.

Nobody forces anybody to flip, it's all up to the people involved.

OTOH, sometimes it may be better to offload something that isn't going anywhere to let someone better suited handle it.

For instance, I keep sitting on http://langpop.com because I've grown fond of it, but I think it'd be worth more in someone else's hands. Maybe it would have taken up less of my time if I'd sold it off immediately after it got popular.

Short term flips can create more jobs and new technologies in the hands of more passionate people.

This. In no way am I trying to take away from what Mark was able to accomplish in a short period of time. IMO there just needs to be some perspective kept w/r/t the overall theme on this site.

Why should people subscribe to your view on this site?

What Mark did is what 99% of the visitors here can only dream of, and if more of them manage to achieve it because of his example then that's the best possible outcome as far as I'm concerned.

I'm part of the 1% that believes that turning a profit (i.e. selling goods or services to customers) is not only a good business goal but a personal achievement.

Yes, and I agree with that too, and so does Mark (though I don't speak for him of course, but judging by the other stuff he's doing).

It's just that there are more ways than one to achieve that goal and essentially by selling threewords.me Mark just made pretty good profit by selling a 'good' (threewords.me + the work invested) to a customer.

> turning a profit (i.e. selling goods or services to customers)

Why does everyone on HN ignore advertising revenue? Or is it lumped in with the above?

In this case, I believe there was no advertising, or at least any advertising revenue. It 'wasn't monetized.' I don't think anyone ignores it, particularly in the case of something that people wouldn't readily pay for.

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