Advertisers Suck

Okay this is going to be a bit of a departure from my normal content.  However one of the things I get sick of as a blogger is dealing with the constant deluge of people wanting me to link to something, or do some sort of half baked paid content scheme to increase their SEO numbers.  I’m feeling a little vindictive today so I am posting the sort of thing that I deal with on a regular basis.

Hey quick question –

I hope everything is going well on your end Advertisers Suck

My name is [Dude You Can Google Keywords], and I’m on the content team at [Cloud Storage Company I Have Never Heard Of].

I just finished going through your article here: http://aggronaut.com/category/games/action/. Thanks for the resource!

My colleague [Some Writer At The Company] recently put together a pretty comprehensive piece on cloud storage for photographers. This really is good information for anyone in this realm. There is a ton of information out there; our guide was designed to cut through the noise a bit.

The post is here: [Link to a post about hosting photography]

Would you consider linking to it in the article of yours I mentioned above? I saw you linked to store.playstation.com in there, so I figured I’d see if you’d link to mine as well. Perhaps your visitors find it helpful, but hey, it’s up to you.

Thanks,

– [Dude You Can Google Keywords]

P.S. I respect the relationship you have with your readers, I wouldn’t ask you to link to anything I didn’t think was an excellent resource for you guys.

So firstly…  my blog is not a photography blog.  Secondly he is linking to one of my categories, this one specifically is for action games so nothing to do with photography.  The reason why he suggests I link to it… is because I link to store.playstation.com???  I mean I do this thing because I am talking about how to claim your Playstation Plus titles without logging into your console.  Anyways this makes zero sense given what my blog is.  As is usually my first line of defense I just ignore the email hoping they will go away.  However this doesn’t always work as is the case with the follow up email that I get.

Hey again –

I figured I’d try one more time Advertisers Suck

Did you happen to get my last email? If you have a moment, could you let me know what you think about this idea? Or maybe you could put me in touch with the person in charge of content?

I’d love any help you can give!

Thanks!

– [Dude You Can Google Keywords]

Now one of the things I have learned the  hard way… is that if they ever do this…  email a second time…  you are NEVER getting rid of them unless you give them a forceful shove off.  I had one person from a website on e-sports betting pester me on and off over the course of an entire month through a string of probably twelve emails where I kept trying to politely say that I am not interested… and that they kept trying to get me to allow them to post promotional content on my site.  So as a result I have to end up sending an email like this one…

Hey [Dude You Can Google Keywords],

I had not responded to the first email in part because I just get tired of responding to emails like this one.  Tales of the Aggronaut is a personal blog and anything that appears on it means that its there because I personally suggest people checking it out.  I don’t do paid ad placement nor do I link to products or services that I did not find organically and I am not actually using myself.  Firstly you included a link that makes zero sense given that it is the action games category of my blog and has nothing to do with photography.  Secondly…  the fact that I link to Store.playstation.com also makes zero sense giving that its a tutorial on how to retrieve your Playstation Plus games of the month through the web interface without having to log into the console.  Essentially nothing you wrote me fits in any way to what I actually write about.  Clearly you spent exactly as much time reviewing my website as was required to fill in what is essentially a madlibs style form email.
None of this makes me interested in your product.  Had you actually found a way to relate this back to my readers in any fashion, and simply approached me with an offer of “we have this awesome product, is this something you maybe want to review?  Here is an account to check it out.  Let us know what you think and tell your readers if you like it.” then bam that is a reasonable way to approach a content creator.  This just feels sleazy.
Anyways hope you have a good day.
Bel

Here is hoping that I never hear from this person again…  but deep down in the back of my mind I know that I will.  There is a slimy underbelly that exists when you get to a certain point with a blog, where all of these people start crawling out of the woodwork wanting to use an anchor on your site as part of some network to increase their search engine ranking.  Some offer to pay… somewhere between $50-100 for placing an article laden with links to their product on your site.  Others like this schmuck seem to want you to do it out of the goodness of your heart.  One guy claimed that it was unfair to my readers to only show part of the story, because I had linked to Libsyn a hosting provider that I use myself for AggroChat and have zero business relationship with.  I could go to the trouble of writing a rule or flagging it as spam, but that doesn’t stop the constant onslaught of people just like them.  Writing this post more than anything is for me personally… because sometimes I just want to scream obscenities at my email.  Instead I am creating a post which is at least somewhat therapeutic.  Monday we will return to our normally scheduled posts.

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