Blog Spam & Sponsored Content

Today I received another email along the lines of "paid content on connortumbleson.com". These emails show up so frequently and I've never gone through with one once - my gut being that my site becomes some spam spot where I'm forced to publish content I did not write.

So I want to just drop some examples I've gotten and talk through them a bit.

In this above example, we don't have a lot of details outside of some entity (with US writers) who will write high quality content specific to my website. I just need to let the author know how much I charge per post.

What bothers me is:

• It doesn't mention what type of content, just that it will relate to my website.
• It doesn't actually name my website once in the content.
• Since it has to mention "via PayPal" my "scam" detection is going off.

The answer was - "I don't do paid/sponsored posts." and no response as expected.

This email was a bit strange because it was directed towards my blog, but about a job search engine. This bothered me because the name used in the content did not match the name in the footer and what the hell does a job search engine have to do with my blog?

A bit of research shows this is common tactic to reach out to bloggers to switch links, but Jooble will never place your link anywhere instead just claiming "it takes a few weeks" for hits to appear.

I can't find Jooble on any top ten board of job searches, so yeah this looks like a complete scam.

This case was a strange one, because attached in the body was a photo of a women with name and contact information for a business. I followed the website linked and it was a real business that matched the information in the footer of email.

Though the business felt eerily like Instagram influencer syndrome to me. This is because the whole premise is to link related advertisers with the content you write. All in all, it seemed like the most professional and sane setup, but I passed with.

Thanks, but I try and keep my blog free from any paid/sponsored work. Keeps it more clean and trustworthy.

This post is the tactic I get a lot of emails about. The idea from all the emails is the same - convert text from old blogs into hyperlinks to the mentioned URL from the email for some money.

It seems easy up front, but some of these emails have actually sent the text and URL to link and the sites are never something I would legitimately link. Usually some sketch website and/or link farm which can end up hurting your site as well.

So for this another - "I'm the right person, but not really interested. I strive to keep my blog free from all paid influence."

Finally is a clever written email with the research done to link a specific blog post. My problem though is - this is a high traffic blog, since release notes for an open source tool are quite popular. So what does encryption of an Android device have to do with my v2.2.1 release of Apktool?

I can't find any reference in that post that has anything to do with encryption outside of maybe signature scheme v2 of an Android package.

I never responded to this one, but it really caught my eye for the strangeness yet normal vibe from it.

With that - 5 examples from my history of folks reaching out for links/sponsors/paid content. With all this talk about sponsorships - I bet this post will be flagged by another email to me soon.