Bloggers beware or am I just being paranoid?

[woodcanuck]

I've had my blog up for about 9 months now, and I get (in my opinion) a decent amount of traffic, given I don't do any sort of marketing. I've been lucky that I don't get a lot of spam as well....or maybe that's a sign that I have an uninformed opinion?...lol.

In any event, today I got a comment from someone wanting to put an ad up on my blog. Don't get me wrong here, I'm open to all offers from Robin Lee and Thomas Lie-Nielsen...but this one just looked 'fishy'. Here's the text:

Hello,

I am contacting you about sponsorship on <my site>. I work in online marketing for DriveNetwork and we are interested in having a text link ad on your webpage recognizing our product, professional carpentry. We are a top reseller of custom cabinetry to finish carpentry and we hope our interests and products would compliment your site and add value for readers, particularly on the page mentioned above. We are hoping to pay a flat monthly rate for this link placement while creating a worthwhile agreement with you.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks!

First instinct...."awesome...people love me...I'll get rich!"

then...a rational thought..."this is kind of unexpected...I wonder who these people are"

Searching on the contact info I find a whole bunch of references to it being a scam. Huh? Who knew?

Any of you guys get anything like this? Anyone with ads on their sites get unsolicited offers like this?

(yes, you may refer to me as 'hey noob')

[TylerYates]

yea i get that alot on my sites i will usually call the company that is asking just to verify that it is them. i find that most company's out there will create some type of note or number that corresponds to them wanting to advertise on my sites.

[Guest Trace]

My web site ( which is not displayed here ) gets offers quite often. Having been burned by a brother-in-law and his brother in a tax shelter that ended up costing me everything I had worked for over a period of twenty years, I have adopted the thought that "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is". He is no longer in the family and is in hiding somewhere in Florida. I believe that a person cannot do enough research when made offers with dollar signs attached. I delete most of then right away, some I write down the names of the companies or person making the offer. Then check every thing I can find about them. It usually takes about 10 seconds for the red flag to be found. I am now back to where I wanted to be at this time in my life, by being very careful with whom I deal. "If there is any doubt, there is no doubt"

[thewoodwhisperer]

You can never be too careful Ian. I get offers like this pretty frequently and you have to do a little legwork to figure out if its legit. Now this particular guy is making the rounds in an effort to create a shotgun campaign. So when you get an offer like this, you can bet your fellow bloggers are getting similar offers. So it never hurts to ask around.

Although at first it may seem too good to be true, is it really? Someone wants to pay you a few bucks for putting a text link on your site. That just sounds like advertising to me. So what I usually do in these cases is not only investigate the company that contacted me, but also the link they want to put on my site. If everything looks legit, and they want to pay you via Paypal, then you aren't really risking much. The payment either arrives or it doesn't.

You'll notice on the TWW home page, I have two text link ads. Both approached me in a very similar way, offering a certain amount of money per month for putting a little tiny text ad on my site. Both are wood related, although the pressure treated poles one is a little off-topic, lol. In most cases, some organization or company has a massive marketing budget and hires one of these ad agencies to pursue ad placement. And that's the guy who contacted you. He probably has a vague and highly inaccurate idea of what your traffic is using something like Alexa, and he's willing to pay X dollars for the ad placement. If you say no, he probably has a few hundred other emails out there to similar bloggers.

So if you don't have any problems with the ad itself, and you don't have a problem with making money, then I say write the guy back and get paid brother!

[woodcanuck]

Thanks Guys,

I e-mailed this guy, we'll see what he says and let you guys know if this was legit or not.

Money is always welcome after all...one of the great things that separates us from other animals...greed! :-)

[RenaissanceWW]

I got this email as well and I honestly haven't followed up on it yet. My investigation process is much like what Marc detailed. Now you may not be thinking too much about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) with your blog but it is something that is always in my mind. Beyond just advertisement the linking power of having another site link to you is something that many of these folks are looking for. This is all the more reason to figure out who wants you to link to them. If you are linked to a site that is poor or practicing black hat SEO tactics then you may get penalized as well by the almighty engines.

Food for thought and like anything, be cautious and do your homework.