Annals of spam

I received the following (unsolicited) email:

Howdy Andrew,

Hope you’re keeping well! I was wondering if you’re open to guest posts at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science – if you are interested, I can offer an original 500-1000 word, very high quality article in fitting with the site. All research and writing will be carried out by a professional writer (namely, me) and once approved it will be entirely yours to place on the site as you see fit.

I can choose a title for the article or you can suggest one and I’ll work around that. Normally I write for property and travel sites (particularly cruise and ski related), but I’m game for anything if you’re happy to entertain me. I can also include some copyright-free and high quality pictures related to the blog post.

You’re probably wondering what’s in it for me, which is a fair question – in return, all I’d ask is a subtle link back in return. Other than that, the material itself would be non-commericial and written with your readership in mind.

Please let me know if you’re interested, and if so I can have your post written in within a week. This offer is open to andrewgelman.com and any other content-driven sites you may own. . . .

Sorry, we have so many cruise and ski related posts here as it is, there’s no room for more!

6 thoughts on “Annals of spam

  1. But he said he’s game for anything! I recall some recent posts where you mentioned various research topics you’d like to see someone working on.

  2. “Guys, let me tell you right now. There’s nothing a man enjoys better after a hard year of bloggin’ than to get on over to [ski resort] for some high quality powder surfin’. And then after, chat up the ladies at [ski resort’s overpriced bar/restaurant].”

  3. Ask him for an article about the tools he uses to harvest sites and send this spam.
    Did he create them? Buy them? Get freeware? Did he evaluate them beforehand, and if so, can he rate them?

    Surely he does not actually *look* at sites himself, since yours would be an odd choice.

  4. John’s idea seems the best to me. I’m tempted to respond to the spammer and ask her to post something on the topic. I’m afraid of doing so, though: I hate to get tangled up in anything resembling organized crime.

  5. Well, actually, the economics of this might be interesting. That seems like a lot of work just to get one linkback.
    Maybe it’s disorganized crime?

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