Got this one in an email today.
To: Webmaster
From:
Derek
derek@*********.comMessage:
Hello,My name is Derek and I work in online marketing for ***********. I
came across your website (http://snarkybytes.com) and feel that it
provides entertaining content about American culture and society. We
are currently looking to purchase a text advertisement for our ADT
Home Security retail site and I think that SnarkyBytes would be a good
fit. I am confident that our products would complement your site and
add value for readers. I am hoping to pay a flat monthly rate for this
advertisement placement while creating a mutually beneficial agreement
with you.I look forward to hearing back from you.
Thanks!
Sorry, Derek. I’m not interested in becoming part of your backlink farm. Go peddle your sleazy SEO shenanigans somewhere else. Try GunUp, they might be interested.
At least it’s higher-quality spam… better than the “I-just-found-your-blog-and-I-really-enjoy-it-keep-up-the-good-work” crap that I get.
Derek got to check out my spam trap today. I hope he enjoyed it!
I hear GunUp is in a market-share battle with arch-rival GunDown!
Alan,
There are a lot of companies who practice sleazy SEO practices, many even in the online gun community. I can assure, though, GunUp is not of of them. We ensure we have the explicit consent of all the bloggers in the GunUp Blogger Network and we strive to contribute to the community through sponsorships of competitive shooters as well as supporting market rates of industry writers who write for GunUp. I believe in transparency and would be happy to open our SEO practices to you to hopefully remove any doubt you might have about our practices.
Dan Hall
CEO, GunUp.com
I must have struck a nerve.
Not at all. From my military service, I’ve found that direct communication and transparency work best in most cases. I’ve sent my email address over to you, feel free to contact me.
Dan Hall
CEO, GunUp.com
Actually I don’t care about GunUp’s SEO practices.
What I object to is the grandiose website and the underpants gnome business plan.
You have no reputation in the online gun community at all yet you dive in with “The Future Of Guns Online” and your plan seems to revolve around getting more established bloggers to contribute to you (and more importantly drive traffic to your site) while you provide exactly what to them?
Web 2.0 operations like GunUp are a dime a dozen on the Internet and the result is always suck and fail.
We have a big vision, fair enough.
What we provide to our bloggers is a good question and one that I would be happy to answer and more importantly back up with fact if interested.
Since our launch, we have sent thousands of visitors to the members in the GunUp Blogger Network. We’ve actually sent much more traffic to our partner bloggers than they have referred to us.
But regardless of the outcome of GunUp, although I am confident we will be successful, for the time being we are providing jobs to our employees, getting new shooters to shoot for the first time, sponsoring competitive shooters (who are also gun bloggers), and driving traffic to the GunUp Blogger Network. In this day and age, if we do nothing else, I’m pretty proud of that.
Dan Hall
CEO, GunUp
Note that Dan here didn’t address the big question: What advantage is this to an individual blogger?
How much money does alan get for directing traffic to you?
Zero, perhaps?
I suspect that Dan doesn’t HAVE an answer.
After all, he’s trying to make money off of bloggers’ hard work, not run a-help-the-bloggers charity.
Kristopher,
The advantage of joining a blog network would depend mainly on the goal of an individual blogger. For many, not all, increasing their exposure is attractive. We lay out our program transparently and it is the individual blogger who decides to join. We think highly of the quality and competency of the gun bloggers in our network and trust they see the value of joining but to answer your direct question – our bloggers get no monetary compensation for joining nor do we get any from them. For sites running ads, there could be an increase in revenue from visitor referrals.
Breda,
We get just a small fraction of our traffic from our blog network referrals and, again, we send out more traffic than we receive. I would be happy to back this up if interested. Our goal is to provide our users with a single destination where they can research, share, and discuss gun related information.
The online gun space is fragmented and cumbersome. It is frustrating for many enthusiasts such as myself and that is why I started GunUp. I started GunUp to try to solve a problem I experienced when researching guns online and in discussions with other enthusiasts found they also experienced.
Alan is correct in that there are a growing number of gun related sites that are web 2.0 centric taking on this problem in various forms. Most of the sites give little or nothing back to the community, bloggers, or competitive shooters. Some are not even run by gun enthusiasts.
I am a firm believer that actions speak louder than words and that is why we sponsor competitive shooters such as Mike Gallion and Caleb Giddings, attended and help sponsor the last Gun Blogger Rendezvous, and sponsor shooting events like the Seattle Geek Shootout and our upcoming shooting event for local gun bloggers.
We know not every blogger will join and we are okay with that as our services are opt-in. I am open to any constructive advice that you might have on how to improve GunUp. I apologize for the long response but I am quite passionate about this space.
Dan Hall
CEO, GunUp.com
“but to answer your direct question – our bloggers get no monetary compensation for joining nor do we get any from them.”
You are conveniently omitting the fact that you will, in fact, be making money off of bloggers – without compensating them for the material they provide for your site. Until you agree to pay your bloggers a respectable percentage of whatever GunUp makes from ad sales and the like, you are nothing more than a plagiarist and should be treated as such. That so many bloggers have chosen to go along with your scheme speaks well of the trusting nature of an enthusiastic and passionate online gun community. Fortunately, some members of that same community are savvy enough to expose you for what you are – someone looking to make a buck off of others’ hard work.
I’ll be looking forward to GunUp’s eventual, and inevitable, demise.
” … nor do we get any from them.”
Liar.
Ad revenue from traffic counts, shithead.