Any drawbacks to being mentioned in a major magazine?

Is it all good, or should I be cautious?

[anax]

I have a site that started as a hobby site before AdSense. When AdSense came along I added AdSense to the site, and worked seriously to expand it since it did start to make a little money even though it's in a specialized area.

I just got an email from a reporter for the online version of a national magazine in the US -- most people would recognize the name. She wants to ask me some questions about my site for a story.

I certainly don't mind talking about the site -- it's nothing that special, and it's all in-the-open, purely white hat stuff. But now that I have started to make a little money from it, I'm suddenly worried about copycats duplicating the whole thing, or large parts of it, which would be fairly easy. If the site gets some attention, is that likely to give potential parasites the idea to duplicate it? Or are they just as likely to come across it anyway?

The exposure would certainly be good for the site. I'm just wondering out loud if there are any drawbacks before I answer the reporter.

[moishe]

Free publicity is always a good thing. Scam artists will find your site regardless. Make sure your server is up to the task before the article comes out and try very hard to get a link from the article, not just a text mention...

[malachite]

As you're running Adsense, you might want to give Google a heads-up when the article is published. A big spike in traffic and clicks could raise suspicion otherwise :)

[anax]

Thanks for the thoughts, everyone. I'm going to go with it and see what happens. (But of course, just because they interview you, doesn't necessarily mean you even appear in the story -- I've had that happen before too.)