Starting a 100% whitehat business - should I decouple it from my current grey/blackhat identity?

Hey folks

I'm about to launch a 100% whitehat business (b2b saas), but I'm stuck on one thing. I want to promote this new service on BHW and a few other forums where I've been active, but my current online identity there is pretty grey/blackhat.

I don't feel entirely comfortable linking this new, clean venture to my black/grey hat reputation. On other hand blackhat experience is what lead me to where I am now.

What are your thoughts? Am I overcomplicating this, or is it worth keeping them completely separate? I'd love to get your point of view.

I think you should be fine unless you have acquired some enemies through your BH endeavours
Personally I keep anything that looks White Hat away from any connection with me, though this isn't much.

stay away or die

It’s great that someone is finally starting a proper white-hat niche project. This forum is full of black-hat and grey-hat stuff—scams, manipulation, and so on.
I personally avoid them and try to keep the whole thing on the white side.

But as for your question, I understand what you mean. But I would see that if you already have a significant position on these forums and have accumulated enough reputation. Even if it is "negative", it doesn't matter. I would say that, deep down, people are understanding.
You can maybe translate this "business communication" in such a way that evil always finds light.

So I recommend that you go for it!

It's fine bro.

Its not like an FBI agent is gonna track you down because you spammed SEO links lol.

I did essentially the same thing. I started out using grey/blackhat methods, and that business eventually became an entirely whitehat brick-and-mortar storefront.

I'd give the new service its own brand for clarity, but I wouldn't try to hide your past. If a potential client wants to wade through 15 years of posts just to find that one time you offered to astroturf someone else's forum thread, they're probably not your ideal client in the first place.

i believe your experience will surely help you with this new service, be positive and start small till you see that its worth improving on

I would definitely keep the identities separate. If you're building a long-term whitehat business, having a clean brand without any connection to previous grey or blackhat activities seems like the safer and more professional approach

I'd keep them separate. A B2B SaaS buyer researching you will judge the new brand on its own merits, and there's no upside to linking a clean, whitehat product to an identity built around grey/black hat work — it can only raise questions you don't need. A fresh identity for the new venture keeps the pitch simple and doesn't require anyone to reconcile the two reputations.

satyr85 said:

Hey folks

I'm about to launch a 100% whitehat business (b2b saas), but I'm stuck on one thing. I want to promote this new service on BHW and a few other forums where I've been active, but my current online identity there is pretty grey/blackhat.

I don't feel entirely comfortable linking this new, clean venture to my black/grey hat reputation. On other hand blackhat experience is what lead me to where I am now.

What are your thoughts? Am I overcomplicating this, or is it worth keeping them completely separate? I'd love to get your point of view.

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People say I overthink/overcomplicate things but I don't think this is an instance, and I agree with you.

I have earned most of my income through adult stuff and did feel an incongruence with this for a long time.

This passive income I am still earning I leave running in the background but am now interested in manual promotion of white niches and just general interest stuff marketing to build communities around hobbies and stuff like that.

I have gone back and forth about the ethical aspects of earning money with porn and settled on since I don't have a problem with porn myself - having been an avid viewer most of my life, I have no ethical problem earning money this way.

The other aspect though is how society at large view it - who see it as sleazy/immoral or whatnot, so just since most people are not open minded about it then for their sake I am just vague about it.

I think of the isolation of whitehat and the grey/adult stuff in the same way. Just due to societies closed mindedness it is just more practical to try and isolate things.

So just make new emails and new accounts for these new ventures.

I had considered in the past having everything grey on proxies and their own browser profiles and such but after some consideration I thought that just too much trouble for the 'threat model'.

So I say, yes isolation, but don't go overboard where it is more trouble than is reasonable for the actual threat.

I would say just have new user accounts and email accounts and leave it at that.

Lifeisnotgood said:

It’s great that someone is finally starting a proper white-hat niche project. This forum is full of black-hat and grey-hat stuff—scams, manipulation, and so on.
I personally avoid them and try to keep the whole thing on the white side.

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Lol I think that is exaggerating things a bit? There has always been a mix of both and just because it is called blackhatworld, it doesnt mean the bh is people trying to scam. There is some but I would say that is the minority on this forum. I am just going by pre-2022 forum so I am not sure how it is now but seems about the same as when I was here last.

The name blackhatworld isn't really accurate these days but of course they have to keep the brand name at this stage but bhw is more little guys trying to get an advantage in an unfair system which otherwise favours those already in power so I see it is empowering in that way whereas trying to go whitehat in this unfair system is extra difficulty.

The algorithms are rigged against you so no problem imo using 'bh' techniques. You will never 'level' the playing field totally but any leg up (I mean just gaming the systems not ripping people off or such) you can get is fair game. To pure more accurately trying to ripoff the megacorps = no problem, but not ripping off those on the same level as you.

BeatboxRank said:

stay away or die

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can you pm me ? regarding peptide JV, cant comment on your post

satyr85 said:

Hey folks

I'm about to launch a 100% whitehat business (b2b saas), but I'm stuck on one thing. I want to promote this new service on BHW and a few other forums where I've been active, but my current online identity there is pretty grey/blackhat.

I don't feel entirely comfortable linking this new, clean venture to my black/grey hat reputation. On other hand blackhat experience is what lead me to where I am now.

What are your thoughts? Am I overcomplicating this, or is it worth keeping them completely separate? I'd love to get your point of view.

Click to expand...

I would suggest you separate them bro
Gives a lot of peace of mind