blogging ethics & link pimping

[davemerrill]

so a while back I got this email from somebody.

I'm an anime fan as well and I found your blog while looking for infos about anime studios.
I envy you so much for visiting Toei! Thanks for sharing the pictures!

Also, I happen to be assigned to a business project involving writing about
entertainment. I noticed that you haven't posted in a while, but if you're
still planning to post more, I'd like to ask you to team up with me on this
project. Let me know if we could discuss this further.

So it's an email about a "business project" involving Let's Anime. I get a lot of those and delete them all. Unlike the others, however, this one is from somebody who actually read my blog, so that's a good sign. I figured "why not" and replied positively. Here's what I got next:

Thanks for getting back to me.

Regarding the project, I'm currently involved in a site that publishes
entertainment news and online gambling guides. I'd like to ask you to write
another post in your blog. It could be anything about anime from 1960s to
1990. I've been hearing quite good reviews about Hokuto no Ken so I'd like
to suggest writing about that, though I haven't seen it myself. The said
post shall include a link pointing to a related article of my client's
site. As compensation, I can send you $70 once the post is up.

May I know if you're open to such project?

So, uh, what? I write a blog post, and somewhere in it I include a link to an article on their client's site, and I get $70? Okay, fine, that's $70 for basically nothing. I put lots of links in my Let's Anime columns. I replied thusly:

Well, it would depend on the subject of the link to your client's website, I would think. Certainly it would have to have some sort of relevance to my blog post.

I mean, if I'm writing about cheese and the National Cheese Council wants to pay me $70 to link to the Cheese News Monthly website, that's relevant, right? Right? So the reply I got was this, just before Xmas:

Hello,

The site is CasinoTop10.net, and the article that you'll be linking to
will also depend on the topic of the post. It doesn't have to be about the
content of our article. We could just mention a sentence or two relating to
it. Also, I realized Hokuto no Ken has too many episodes and will take too
much of your time, so let me know if you're open to writing about other
shorter titles. If for some reason you won't be able to write the post, I
can prepare it for you and you can just put it up in your blog.

We've actually done a similar setup with other anime bloggers before. An
example would be this article:
http://shinigamilist.com/2012/09/19/perfect-blue-anime-review-want-to-become-a-different-character-beware-of-overdoing-it/

Also, if we could post this before the 31st, I could increase the payment
to $80. (My budget changes every month so I usually increase during the
last week)

May I know if we could proceed?

So if I'm reading this right, the plan would be for me to drop what I'm doing while I'm on Christmas vacation, write a blog post about Fist Of The North Star (which is way, way down on my list of things to write about at Let's Anime), and somewhere in that post insert a link to some kind of casino entertainment news site, which is not at all relevant to Fist Of The North Star or Japanese cartoons whatsoever. And I get paid $80! Such a deal.

I realize fully that I'm a small time, fairly insignificant blogger. But I do have my pride and some kind of journalistic responsibility to my readers to not dump incoherent links on them. And if I DID decide to sell out, it would be for more than $80, I can assure you. So I just put this on hold and went on about my business. Around about Jan. 20 I got another email.

Hello Dave,

Haven't heard from you in a while. I hope you're doing fine.

I'm not sure if you received my previous email but I'm attaching it here
just in case. May I know if you're still interested in doing this project?

And to that I replied:

Well, I don't think so. I've been trying to figure out a way that this isn't deceptive and unfair to my readers, and I'm not coming up with anything. If I ever do write a blog post that has anything to do with online gambling, I will certainly let you know.

And so far I haven't heard anything back, so I guess I'm crossed off the list of potential link-sellers. But now I'm intrigued and a little disturbed. Is this typical practice among bloggers, selling body-copy links to advertisers? I mean, I have Google sidebar ads, but those are clearly ads, they aren't inserted INSIDE the text of whatever I write as if it had some sort of relevance to the reader (and if you're running any kind of ad-blocking software you won't see them at all). There's a line that's being crossed here. I don't wanna say I'm some kind of saint, but you are going to have to tack a few more zeros onto that number before I start being deliberately deceptive to my readers. Also, payment in advance.

LET'S ANIME. Eschewing deceptive and unethical blogging practices since 2007!

Comments

[10dimensions.livejournal.com]

Do you by any chance read The Bloggess? She posts about getting these kind of requests a lot, and has even come up with a boilerplate response involving Wil Wheaton (http://thebloggess.com/2011/03/dear-wil-wheaton/). I thought you might get a chuckle out of it, now that you're in the heady realm of sought-after bloggers.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

wow, I have yet to have any one offer to sell me a photo of a celebrity doing something. There's probably a market for that somewhere, though. I mean, you have a photo of, say, Ed Asner holding a glass of orange juice, you have to work and find the market for that photo!

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

usually the business proposal emails I get are non-specific, and are about how they'd like to write a guest post on my blog, or how they'd like to team up to write a blog post about something. By the wording of the email it's pretty obvious that it's spam.

Sometimes I get people that want to swap banner ads. I had one site that wanted to trade links, early on, and I said sure, fine, and I put their link up and they didn't put my link up, so to heck with that.

I did have one guy who really wanted me to write more about "nice" shows. Uh, do it yourself, fella.

[10dimensions.livejournal.com]

Well now you have a ready response when they ask you to blog about something in exchange for a photo [because she encourages other bloggers to use her Wil Wheaton photo to answer the PR pitches they receive]. They aren't even offering cash payment!... you blog, we send you this photo of random celeb next to random thing.

I don't actually even understand how this is a business model. At least your guy was offering you money to blog about their product!

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

OTOH put some Hokuto no Ken pachislot machines in local casinos and...I'm probably done.

For a brief time there was a Star Trek video slot machine at a local casino, and it was a glorious thing to behold, but it had a stupid high max bet and since you can't really nail the big jackpots without the max bet, it became a money sucker real fast.

Also was a keen Ghostbusters video slot. Both gone now.

Anyway, it seems a complete scam. How would you be paid? Surely you wouldn't give them bank info for 'direct deposit', right? Mailing you a check opens them to being tracked and charged with some kind of fraud using interstate commerce.

Seems it's just a way to get links to sites that get YOU in trouble (as people report you for spam and such things) without getting their hands dirty.

And I kinda wish people would leave Wil Wheaton alone already.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I was thinking it might be some kind of attempt to get the FOTNS fans who are also gambling fans, that they might think there's some kind of crossover there. I'm assuming payment would be via PayPal

I will say I have seen Star Of The Giants pachislot machines in two separate completely incongruous locations (junk shop in Hamilton, antique store in Berea KY).

Reno had a few of the Star Trek video slots. Actually there was a wide variety of TV property slot machines. We played the Tim Conway/Harvey Korman one.

I did see where there's an American importer of anime-theme pachinko and pachislot machines looking to start exhibiting at anime cons - and might I add it's about time.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

But will they use the pachinko parlor method of paying off the wins? I could easily see some of the fans befuddled when they're handed a dozen or so lipsticks at the payout counter... :)

Yeah, TV and movies are a key thing in current slots, but of course companies tire of paying licensing fees and just make crap up. the big thing now seems to be mechanical slots with REALLY BRIGHT LIGHTS made in China. These things seems to hypnotize players.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Surely one lousy spam link isn't going to bring them in $80 (plus the cost of chappy's time), either. There's got to be a catch.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

i imagine this is at least partly a content-padding effort.

to see a better example of this, have you ever google searched for a review of a unique product only to have the first 3 pages nothing but review sites that sell themselves as review sites, but when you go to them, its nothing but spam adverts with thousands of keyword combos?

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's one of the reasons I dumped Google for Bing.

What man creates, man perverts.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

lol, bing is in no way immune to this problem, either.... :(

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

no, of course you're right, but somehow it just seems EASIER to weed out the obvious keyword humpers. It's like reading the Amazon sponsored ads like "find everything Hamilton's Invaders at Yahoo" and, dude, Hamilton's Invaders was a one-year toy line from Remco back in like '66, using a ton of items repurposed from Monkey Division and other things....

In other words I doubt very very much Yahoo will tell me more about Hamilton's Invaders... :)

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

hah, that made me lol, and not just cuz my name is Hamilton. ;p

I'm currently experiencing the business end of this problem now, helping a friend install a stereo and running into a unique problem with their car. Searching for people who've had similar issues is rocky at best, but i dunno if its linkspam, or just a rare problem i'm dealing with in this case....