Do they really want to advertise on my blog?

October 17, 2011 8:19 AM

I received an email the other day from someone who claims they have a client who wants to advertise on my blog, which I only started a couple of months ago. I can't tell if it's legit, and I'm wondering how best to find out. I don't have any advertising on my blog, nor do I have any mentions of seeking advertisers.

Here is the email, with a couple of things taken out and replaced by brackets:

"Hi,

I am the marketing executive of a very successful digital marketing and SEO company based in the UK. I would be very interested to find out what different marketing opportunities you offer through your various channels and would appreciate it if you could reply by email to me with some initial information.

We work with a broad range of clients across a wide range of different market sectors, so if this opportunity is of interest to you please contact me for a further discussion.

In this specific instance we are representing a client in the [industry related to my blog] industry and would be interested in your [URL of my blog] blog site.

I look forward to your response.

Best wishes,
[name]

I Googled the woman's name and didn't find anything other than some Russian-language results. Because of that, and because my blog is so new, and the email is so vague, I'm thinking this is some kind of scam or something. Should I bother emailing back? If so, what should I ask at this point? If it is a scam, what would the scam be?

posted by trillian to computers & internet (9 answers total)

For one reason or another it tripped their sensors for traffic, or is close to a URL that has traffic.

They're likely to offer you some piddly amount of money--or a large amount of money--to give them the URL.

They are unlikely to pay. Indeed, the more money the offer, the less likely it is that you'll see a dime.

Delete these. They're spam.
posted by valkyryn at 8:21 AM on October 17, 2011

That the email is very vague about which company she works for is a red flag to me that this is not on the up and up. It reads like a form letter with your URL inserted, which again, just screams that this is not legit.

I wouldn't waste my time on a reply if I were you.
posted by too bad you're not me at 8:25 AM on October 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

FWIW, back in the day I made some pretty decent pocket cash selling text links that were inserted into old posts on my blog. I usually asked for at least $50 per link, and there were usually multiple links involved, so I made a couple of hundred bucks for taking 5 minutes to cut and paste a few text links into an old posts. I think Google's algorithms have improved so that there are not as many opportunities to do this, or at least I don't get them anymore.

IMO, it's worth an email back. If they don't pay it'll take you 5 minutes to delete the links. I never had a problem, and several of the firms that bought from me were not in the US.
posted by COD at 8:38 AM on October 17, 2011

Over the years I have received a good handful of these. I'd imagine many of them are automated, because the pages they ask to place adverts on (from my old website) usually only have loose connection to the product/service they claim to represent.

My old website, which I haven't updated since 2007, still receives around 250-300 hits a day, regularly. Most of these come from Google image searches on a variety of topics (my old blog was diverse).

I followed one of these emails up, a legit sounding one, and they were offering me something like $5 to place an advert forever. I declined.
posted by 0bvious at 9:02 AM on October 17, 2011

I get emails like this all the time. It sounds generic and formulaic. I just consider this kind of stuff to be spam.
posted by Vaike at 10:23 AM on October 17, 2011

I don't think these people are serious about trying to buy or sell you anything, they are fishing for a valid email address.

The red flag is that word "SEO", not every "SEO marketing expert" is a spammer or a scam artist but about 99.9% of them are!
posted by Lanark at 11:55 AM on October 17, 2011

This is spam. I've gotten this email before in connection with a music blog that I have. Delete it.
posted by chrisfromthelc at 12:44 PM on October 17, 2011

I just got a referral from a friend, guy in the UK paying $80 same day via Paypal to place a single text link in an archived blog post. So I guess this still happens, I just funded by upgrade to an Android :)
posted by COD at 10:41 AM on October 18, 2011

Thanks, all!
posted by trillian at 9:42 AM on October 21, 2011