Providing service to your competition

They will pay $

[stinky]

I provide an online service and one of my competitors contacted me and offered to pay me money for my service. Another thing is that some of my competitor’s customers already use my service along side theirs. So my competitor kind of knows what I am doing.
By providing this service to my competitor I would not be hurting my business so to speak because they already see what I offer and give to customers that are using there service also.
It still come down to the fact that they are my competition, so should I take the money or tell my competitor no? what would you do?

[minnapple]

Never sleep with your enemy.

[jeowind]

i respectfully disagree with Minnapple. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Unless you feel that you have a serious edge over your competitors due to something you know that they dont. In that case, yeah, dont give away the family secrets.

[phparion]

i just want to say that do not treat your competetor as normal customer, he knows that he is your competetor still he is asking you to give him services then think deep what is he demanding? why would he need that? how can he use that? why not he go to some other solution provider? why only you? BUT do not show back, if you are clever and fair trust me he will be trapped into his own trap :)

[aspdaddy]

They can always buy though a different company name if you refuse , go ahead let them subscribe for R&D & know that they will bring them to strategy meetings :)

[Oliver Henniges]

"competitor" is a concept of the past millenium.

cooperate or vanish.

Take the first ten spots of your major KW serps. Assume five of these companies would cooperate and interlink to an extent slighlty below triggering heavy-cross-linking-filters, while the other five pursue an egoist strategy.

Guess what will happen if the former five decide to bring another five related pages to the net.

Try to find out if your "competitor" has understood that.