Notes to advertisers: checking the author’s name, email address, and what the blog is about, and acknowledging how odd their advertising attempt is – these are all good things. You’d be surprised (or depressed) how often people cold-contact me without doing any of the above. I almost feel sorry that I had to refuse…
“Hello Adam,
My name is [] from []. I was just wondering if you can write a short review about our site. Although I know your site is about Video Gaming, everybody needs car insurance, and I hope a short article in between your main content would not be a big deal. As a ‘thank you for your time’, we’ll give you a $25 gift certificate to GameStop.
Look forward to hearing back from you.”
…but given my day-rate is well over $1500 (and I’m working flat-out already) … a $25 gift cert isn’t really appealing. Sorry!
PS: the *webserver* (not the blog) is configured to block + redirect any traffic coming from insurance sites, so I’m not concerned at the impact on SEO traffic flowing this way for the fact I’ve now quoted those (bad) magic words. They’ll be a bit surprised – the current redirect code is (indirectly thanks to my Alma Mater) “[this webserver] is a teapot” (an obscure reference to the web-server that *was also* a filter-coffee machine, many years ago)
PPS: most sites about SEO are also blocked + redirected, so I’m no longer afraid of those 3 letters either…
PPPS: I post these emails mainly because so few normal people talk about this stuff (as opposed to adsense “professional” web-marketers, who talk about nothing else), and I think it’s an important topic. What’s “good” advertising? What’s “bad”? How should you approach a website when cold-calling about ads? What should a site-owner consider acceptable terms? etc…