What I Have to Deal With

I don't write much about the ins and outs of having a blog because I assume most of you don't really care. As long as the site is up and continues to offer updates regularly, that's all that matters. And that's as it should be. After all, if the blog talks too much about blogging, it's not a personal finance blog now is it? (Unless it's about how blogging can earn you some money.)

But after about a ga-zillion messages like the one that follows, I've lost it. I HAVE to say something.

What's setting me off is an email that I received recently. It reads as follows:

I found your site while searching Google and have found your website information and advice to be a very good fit for our visitors. As such, we are interested in buying advertising space on your home page http://www.freemoneyfinance.com.

Our budget is within $10/month. If you are interested, please send me your rate per month and PayPal information.

If we are happy with your price we will send you the link details that you can place on your website and we will make the payments to the PayPal ID provided.

Thanks for your time.

Here's my rant:

1. READ MY ADVERTISING POLICIES -- I DO NOT SELL TEXT LINKS!!!! This is plainly explained, so why do you send me an email about buying text link ads? Are you so dense or lazy that you can't even take 30 seconds to locate and scan a post on a site you want to advertise on (for those of you wondering, Google frowns on selling text link ads because it screws up the way they rank content -- which is what the buyer is hoping for.)

2. If I did sell text links, it sure would be for more than $10 a month. A WHOLE LOT more in fact. Why is that? Because after about three months Google would crush me and I'd no longer have a site.

3. Looking at #1 and #2 above, I need to restate my position. I think I will sell text links. The price is $1 million per month. But if you buy multiple months (payment in advance and non-refundable, of course), I can get that down to $500,000 per month. :-)

4. From now on, anyone sending me a text link ad request will get no response. I've been responding "I don't sell text links" for some time, but now you won't even get that courtesy. Take that!

Ok, I feel much, much better now. Thanks for letting me vent. This personal finance blog will now resume its normal topic and schedule.

Comments

[Financial Samurai]

FMF - It's called laziness and spam from advertisers.

I just ignore everything, LITERALLY! That's why you see no ads on my site. I'll probably put something up in December to pay for operating costs and use some to donate to charity.

But for my site, everything is directly negotiated.

$1mil? SOLD!

FS

[Brett]

what exactly is a text link? I also don't get how google would crush you for having them? I also have no experience with this type of thing so I'm just curious.

[Josh Stein]

Text links? I'll order a dozen!

[FMF]

Brett --

A text link is simply a word or set of words (like "great payday loans") that is hyperlinked to a specific site (in this example, a payday loan site.)

If a site buys enough of these links, it will place highly in Google search results (and thus get lots of traffic). Google frowns on this because they want to list the best sites based on what people/sites are linking to on their own (because it's good, not because they're paid.) As such, they penalize sites selling text links in an attempt to stop the process.

[Bill]

Also, you have already sooo many ads here where would you fit any new text link ads?

[FMF]

Bill --

Ha!

If you'd like to sponsor the site at $20k per month, I'll be happy to take down all the ads. :-)

BTW, in case you didn't know, all my revenue goes to charity:

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2005/10/fmf_speaks_my_a.html

[Eugene Krabs]

There goes my marketing idea for pork belly futures here. :D

[Peter]

You gotta love those text link ad brokers. My favorite ones that I receive are the ones that get my site name wrong completely.

Like,

"Dear Owner of ABCMommySite.com"

Makes it pretty obvious they're just spamming as many sites as they can to find suckers to sell their sites at a cheapo rate.

[BobDoleSaysHi]

I tend to believe the author of this blog is a jolly old fellah. A few kilos short of being Mr. Claus himself. This post made me feel bad and now I'm afraid of the author. The same happened to me when I realized Leo Laporte (from ZDTV, TechTV era) wasn't as nice as he seemed on TV.

[MC]

If you think of a way to eliminate SPAM, let us all know!
Meanwhile, we'll all have to just keep deleting the crap.

[Old Limey]

FMF:
As you must know by now I really enjoy the thought provoking subjects that you come up with every week. I also appreciate that your blog attracts readers that seem to me to be a lot more serious, more literate, and better educated, than blogs on MarketWatch where it's full of responses that are often just rude and illiterate one-liners. That's why I don't bother with them anymore.

I was planning to ask a bunch of questions that this particular subject provoked but I see that you already have an "ABOUT FMF" section that provides all the information that you are willing to make public.

Keep up the good work, you are providing a great service, though I must admit that I am getting addicted to Free Money Finance. It and Sudoku take up a lot of my computer time now that my investments are all running themselves on Auto Pilot.

[Money Beagle]

Sorry, no sympathy here. You have a very popular blog and if this is the biggest problem you get from your high subscriber and reader counts, consider yourself lucky.

[Crystal]

I will have to diddo Old Limey, keep up the great work! I'm definitely addicted.

[FMF]

Old Limey --

Thanks for the thoughts. If you get tired playing Sudoku, my offer to write some guest posts is always open.

BTW, I plan on updating my "about" section -- one of several items on my ever-growing to-to list.

[Eric]

Let us know when you update that "about section" :)

And Old Limey, why aren't you taking up his offer?! Pleeease. :)

[Jan]

For newbies out there, it would be advisable not to take up these offers. Just for the fact that you will lose any search ranking (no matter how low) and get your site blacklisted.
Also don't give out any financial or personal details to these scammers. No doubt you may lose more than the $10 you were looking forward to.
Do what I do. Place those email addresses and sites on the spam list

[tycoon cashflow review]

Text links rule. I prefer text links over any banner.

[Noadi]

Google Adwords which you display (and I use for advertising my business) lets you target specific site with your ads anyway. So if someone wants to advertise here they could use Adwords and target the site that way. Reputable ad networks know how to format ads so that google and other search engines don't knock your site for them.

I've gotten these emails too for my blogs and I direct them to the two ad networks I use to advertise that way. Sometimes these are spammers and sometimes they're just unaware of how to do advertising online.

[aaktx]

I will give you 20 dollars a month instead of the ten you were quoting. A hundred percent increase over the previous bid.