Are you punished for listing a new site on your old site?

[seonewbee]

I have heard that a good way to get in the search engines is to let them find you on another site, will you be penalized if you own both sites and link from the old site to the new site? They are on totally different topics. Should one get a private listing from GoDaddy to avoid any penality? Does anybody here know about private listing. I have almost finished my site and hopefully will have it up in a few days. Should I just include a link to it in my sig here?

Thank in advance for all your comments.