I’m so happy to keep you in the loop of the ridiculous…

My little wine blog keeps me endlessly amused, by the way, and I love sharing. We’re actually making history with current affairs, here.

I got an Email this morning, and knew that I’d not be interested in what was being offered, just by the requester having no professional footer within her Email to me, but I decided to play along… just for the fun of it, and fun it was.

First Email:

I’m Bonnie Smith [not the real name].

I’m contacting you to ask if you are interested in blog post sponsorship. I came across your wine-blog.org and I am interested to buy a link and post to the blog posts that you have.

If you are interested kindly mail me back and I’ll send you our guidelines and process, especially the pricing details.

Looking forward doing good business with you. Thank you and God bless!

I just loved the “God bless!” part. At last, someone to save me.

So, I wrote back:

What are you proposing?

Kindest regards, Jo

To which she responded:

I have a few criteria and guidelines for inclusion:

Please let me know if you understood the guidelines. I would be happy to answer any of your questions.

• Embed/Put 1 link code for 1 post.
• Post should have a minimum of 200 words.
• Their [sic] will be no other embedded link on the post except my link codes.
• Each post with 1 embedded link code is worth $5 (Limited to assigned link code per blog site)
• If you going to insert my keyword on to the sentences make sure the word would fit or relate to the entire sentence. Make the the insertion look organic/naturally included within the post.
• Post should be and only in English.
• Your site must not have any Porn Pills and Casino related post on the main page or on blog roll area.
• Payment is sent thru paypal after a day permalinks are confirmed live and correct.
• The post should not be deleted within 10 months from the date of posting.

 Do let me know if you agree so we can start.

Oh, yeah… R-i-g-h-t…

I wrote back to her:

Thanks for the parameters, Bonnie.

As a publicist, I work for $125/hour, writing for clients all day long. I just finished one release that’s over 300 words (a small one), and it took me an hour. So, I get $125 for that. Writing a story for you guys with a link that’s embedded for $5 is… well, you can see, out of my realm of possibilities when I have so many other opportunities at my base pay.

Good luck with your projects. I’m too seasoned at this point.

Then she wrote to me:

I understand your concern, but actually you don’t need to write a new article for me. I will be the one to choose an article from your archives that fits the keyword. All you need to do is just insert the keyword naturally to the post.

Ah… there it is, bypass the asking the blogger to allow for a guest writer, so a key link can be inserted, and go right to the source, offering the same $5.00. So, that makes my blog have advertisers that I may not agree with. Now, I’m sure I could choose to not put that link into the blog posting, but in the time it takes me to think about it and then reply… possibly adding the link, or not…

• I’ve just used up 10  minutes of my time, and according to my calculations, that’s $12.50.
• But, more importantly, I’ve just bastardized my blog.

What will they think up next?

Between the poor grammar and the dangling of five whole dollars at me, this makes me wonder if this is all coming from a Third World county. There, $5.00 could get you a week’s worth of groceries, right?

I may be onto something…

Meanwhile, what do you think?

I’m still chuckling…