This just came in:
On Dec 27, 2017, at 6:55 PM, **@gmail.com wrote:
My name is ** and I am a freelance writer hoping to contribute my writing to andrewgelman.com. I would be willing to compensate you for publishing.
For my posts, I require one related client link within the body of my article, as well as no “guest” or “Sponsored” tag on the post. I am willing to offer $50 per post published on the site as compensation for these things. Please let me know if you are interested and/or if you have any questions.
OK, here’s the cool part: For all you know, I’ve taken this guy (or bot) up on his offer. So from now on, when reading this blog, you’ll have to guess which of the posts you’re seeing are sponsored content. Given the conditions above, unfortunately I’m not allowed to label these particular posts.
It’s possible, right? Just about all my posts have links, and, hmmmm . . . $50 per post x 400 posts a year = $20,000. That’s real money! Also think of all the time this frees up for me, if someone else is writing all my posts for me. It’s really a win-win situation, and Google can translate all the Russian to English, no problem.
You will be RICH!
Just don’t self cite too much. Twitter abuzz with this topic. lol
Don’t you need something like this?
http://1389blog.com/pix/on-the-internet-no-one-knows-youre-a-dog-disguised-as-a-cat.jpg
+1
Dammit. They’ve found me out.
Never use your credit card when buying the cat kibble. Dead giveaway.
I’ve actually received this kind of email twice already. At first I thought about telling Andrew for amusement, but then I figured that if *I* received them, other commentators must also have, so it was probably not news to him. But maybe they haven’t and it was?