A few months ago I reported on someone who wanted to insert text links into the blog. I asked her how much they would pay and got no answer.
Yesterday, though, I received this reply:
Hello Andrew,
I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I’d like to make a proposal for your site. Please refer below.
We would like to place a simple text link ad on page http://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2011/07/super_sam_fuld/ to link to *** with the key phrase ***.
We will incorporate the key phrase into a sentence so it would read well. Rest assured it won’t sound obnoxious or advertorial. We will then process the final text link code as soon as you agree to our proposal.
We can offer you $200 for this with the assumption that you will keep the link “live” on that page for 12 months or longer if you prefer.
Please get back to us with a quick reply on your thoughts on this and include your Paypal ID for payment process. Hoping for a positive response from you.
I wrote back:
Hi, thanks for the reply. It’s not worth it to me for $200 but thanks for asking.
It really isn’t worth it to me for $200 or $2,000 or $20,000 to uglify and destroy the blog’s non-commercial nature. On the other hand, what if I could have 500 adwords on the page at $200 each. For $100K, I’d probably do it: that would pay for a postdoc! Not that I think this would ever happen. I was just curious what number they were going to come up with.
I would like to apply (and have no shot of getting) said postdoc
$200 sounds like a lot of money for one link. How can they afford that?
I’m confused: Is this for all pages, or just the Sam Fuld page? It certainly reads like just the one page. What could this person possibly be selling that it would be worth $200 to put a text link on a single page? Rephrase: could this person be doing something (anything?) legitimate where paying $200 for a link on a page makes sense? Smells bad to me – feels like she’s trying to paypal scam you, or trying to use the link to defraud someone else. The only thing that surprises me is the good English, though the unaccountable delay is characteristic scam behavior.
Maybe we should start a non-profit ads provider for non-commercial academic blogs and use the proceeds to fund research…? Only problem is: What reader of an academic blog like ours’ would ever click on a link for vacuum-cleaner bags?
On further thought I think this is an attempt to set up clickfraud of some sort. I would love to see the “final text link code.” Maybe tell her you are willing to consider doing it for free, and see what you get.
I don’t think this has anything to do with clicks or dynamic popularity, but with PageRank, as it seems an attempt to get a link from a relatively high ranked page (4 or 10), i.e., Google: super sam fuld, get 364K results, and Andrew’s is on the 2nd page, not bad.
See PageRank, section “Manipulating PageRank.”