Blog bribes!

Nick Rizzo points to this amusing Gawker item (sorry!) from Hamilton Nolan about advertisers trying to sneak links into blog content. The Gawker blogger got the following email:

Greetings,
My name is Bryan Clark, and I’m a big fan of your writing. I contacted you because I think I have a mutually beneficial agreement that will allow you to make additional money for articles you are already writing online. Let me give you an idea of how we can help each other.
We’re looking for writers that can help increase the profile of our clients by linking to them within the context of their articles. The clients are huge, and we generally have one that can fit naturally in the context of most article niches.
In return, we pay generously for a single link for our clients.
If you are interested, I’d love to talk about it more.

Regards,
Bryan Clark

Hey, that looks kinda familiar! Here’s an email I received a couple weeks ago [actually, last month, as we’re currently on a 1-month lag for non-topical items]:

Dear Andrew Gelman,

I just got done reading your “Using a “pure infographic” to explore differences between information visualization and statistical graphics” and loved it! I was wondering if you did advertising? I’m marketing out a few sites and can pay you $50 via PayPal to add a text link into one of your older posts. The link would go to an education site and I’d make sure the site relates to your post’s content.

Thanks and let me know if we can work something out!

Mandy Lando

Apparently, Mandy Lando and I have one thing in common—I too loved my post on infographics!—and one area where we disagree: I do not want to add extraneous links to my blog posts. Still, I appreciated the offer of $50, so I replied politely:

Sorry, we’re not doing any ads right now.
AG

Hamilton Nolan was more enterprising. I guess that’s why he is a reporter and I’m not. I try to avoid awkward situations, but a good reporter will try to push things further. Here’s the follow-through:

I [Nolan] responded, “Who are your clients? What’s the deal?”

Hamilton,

I’d love to jump on Skype with you or gChat perhaps if you’d like to talk more.
We work with big clients like Dell, T-Mobile, Sanford Brown, Motorola, etc. that are constantly looking for links to their products or websites. Writers like you are the natural medium to approach, as you write articles where these can appear naturally within the context of the article. We aren’t looking for anything that doesn’t occur semi-naturally.
We pay based on the size of the site the link goes on. If you want to send me a list of sites you currently write for I can give you a price breakdown.

Regards,
Bryan

Me: “Well, I write for Gawker.com, so feel free to send me a price breakdown based on that.”

For a link on Gawker, we would pay $130 [later upped to $175 — ed.] per link.
-B

Not bad for five seconds of work!

There’s more, but here’s what I took away from this exchange:

1. They aren’t looking for anything that doesn’t occur “semi-naturally,” so really it’s all ok.

2. Gakwer gets $175 per link, whereas Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science gets only $50.

If I can’t even get paid as much as a writer for a gossip site, forget about it!

P.S. to future spammers: Some of my friends call me “Andy” or “Drew.” That will work better than “Dear Andrew Gelman.”

7 thoughts on “Blog bribes!

  1. On the other hand, it is flattering to be asked. I can see it now:
    “In the previous plot of world record times vs. distance, I would like to point out that 87% of the record-holders wore NIKE Enhanced Perfomance Racing Cleats with new Ultra-Grip Spikes [LINK].”

    Real natural. No one would notice.

  2. Dear Andy,

    My old friend how are you!? It has been a long time! I was hoping to discuss a mutually beneficial business opportunity with you! Please respond as soon as possible!

    Your old friend,
    The Prince of Nigeria

  3. So, instead of just blogging, you need to do a statistics thriller movie, as product placements in movies are worth a lot more than links in blogs, and can easily be kept “natural.”
    And keep the merchandise rights, like the way George Lucas did with Star Wars. :-)

  4. I think their standards are even lower than you thought: I just got a $50 link offer from one Emily Hill. I thought about accepting as a cruel joke since my site gets so little traffic… but declined.

  5. Pingback: Latest in evil blog advertising « Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

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