Received email asking to advertise on my site, not sure if spam, what say you?

Sutra

Sutra

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Received an email through my website contact from from some guy asking if he could advertise on my website for a set dollar amount. He provided a link to his site, which I checked out by going there directly. Did not click his link.

Two things though:
  1. His email was generic
  2. His website is not relevant to my niche

Because of those two things, it seems like it could just be some spam shit. Where if I reply I open the floodgates to more spam.

What say you?
 
But the person is trying to give you money... Spam usually involves people trying to take away money from you.
 
True. But was thinking that this might be some misleading type of outreach campaign. Using the idea of giving advertising $ to get people to check out his site (with no real intention of advertising).
 
If it's just a webmaster that is willing to pay a fair amount I would consider it.

If it's an agency that will put your domain into their database of link sellers I would not consider it.
 
Trankuility said:
Using the idea of giving advertising $ to get people to check out his site (with no real intention of advertising).
Click to expand...

I was going to say "I can't imagine anyone going to such lengths for a tiny amount of un-targeted traffic..." but then I remembered I'm on the internet.

But yeah, I would respond and see what's up. I guess he could be trying to check if your email address is active and by responding you're confirming that and now he'll add you to some malicious mailing lists or something but... I dunno, what's the point of having a contact form on your site if you aren't going to respond to people who want to pay you?
 
Hahah. Good point.

I'll have to see what it be like.
 
Scared money doesn't make money.

Who cares if you get put on a spam email list? Just delete the emails. It's going to happen anyways. SOMEBODY is going to add you to a list and sell it. My cell phone number has been sold so many times that my block list has more #'s in it than my actual contacts. However, that initial phone call made me a ton of cash.
 
Just emailed him back. Seems strange to me the way he's going about it. But if this will bring in some advertising money, that will be berry goot.

Will update this thread if anything develops.
 
I have the same issue as well. He/she wants to pay $50 per post and $50 per link
 
another thing to consider is if the person who mailed you is really trying to hurt the site he want's you to link to, simply by buying links and then reporting it to google, could get that site deindexed, at least in the old days, and since he is the one buying the links he has the evidence that links are being bought.
just check the header of the mail to make sure that it isn't a spoofed mail, or since it's not your site he is after don't give a fuck.

Normally I never put links on my site that is not relevant to the site/page and/or doesn't add value to my users.
 
@lion1978 Do you think a dude is tossing around $50 per link on real sites just so he can report them to Google afterwards? There are way easier ways for him to hurt that site.

If it's a gambling site, or pharma, or something else that's banned by Adsense, I'd just make sure you disable ads on the article you're linking from as an extra precaution. Also ask for $75-$100, and make sure the article looks good, has a bunch of other outbound links, and is actually relevant to your niche so it doesn't stand out... Will this ruin your money site? Not likely, in my opinion, but it's still a risk so be aware of that I guess.

I'm not saying go ahead and let everyone buy links on your site as a free for all, but if you have like 100 quality articles and tons of OBL already, an extra one in there isn't going to burn your house down. "Real" blogs link to casinos etc all the time, it's not just spammy SEO PBN stuff that does. Whether it's to be like "Dear journal, today I lost my mortage at 888 .com and my wife left me..." or "After work I checked out some casino sites, there was 888, Sports Interaction, Bodog..." So it's not like anyone that links to one of those sites is automatically a bad dude selling links, jah feel?

But in the grand scheme of things, $50 is a drop in the bucket of what your site is going to earn.
 
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I wouldn't recommend ever selling a link to a pharma or gambling site unless you're a pharma or gambling site, especially if it's an authority site you care about, or any site you care about. Who you link to has far more to do with your "neighborhood" than who links to you. Are there two other verticals that are under more scrutiny by Google and People than those two?
 
I think I might know why he emailed me in the first place. Recently started with a new CPM service. Today I was looking at one of the articles and the ad was "Advertise Here!", haha. So I imagine the guy saw that and thought, "Well shit, ok. I'll advertise there!"

But it just dawned on me that maybe that was due to my own browsing habits. Sooooo...I'm a retard. Nevermind, haha.
 
Just for the record I definitely wouldn't RECOMMEND it either, I wouldn't be like "This is the smartest, wisest, long-term move to make. I recommend that you sell links to sites in shadier niches."
 
@j a m e s I have seen people spend a lot more than 50 $ per link to do that, so it is plausible, and yes there are a lot more ways to hurt a site and most of them are a lot cheaper, but it is still an option to take into consideration.
 
lion1978 said:
another thing to consider is if the person who mailed you is really trying to hurt the site he want's you to link to, simply by buying links and then reporting it to google, could get that site deindexed, at least in the old days, and since he is the one buying the links he has the evidence that links are being bought.
just check the header of the mail to make sure that it isn't a spoofed mail, or since it's not your site he is after don't give a fuck.

Normally I never put links on my site that is not relevant to the site/page and/or doesn't add value to my users.
Click to expand...
What about a gmail link? I'm not sure if I should trust those
 
I have actually seen small business use gmails, but to me it seems unproffessional and just wrong, especially if you have a website, so if you get the link request from a gmail, I wouldn't trust it at all, if there mail isn't the same as the domain or from an agency domain I wouldn't go with it, it.
 
@lion1978 Fair enough, if people are spending $75? $100+? per link to build quality links from real sites to their competitor's domains so that they can report their competitors to Google for buying links, then negative SEO has officially jumped the shark. Never heard of that as a strategy before today.
 
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