Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The New Blogspam

Yesterday, for the second time, I got a most peculiar email.

It was from a shopping site (or more precisely, from a network of shopping sites), and it was offering me a chance to run a contest on my blog for their merchandise. The first email I received was from a different site network, and was offering to pay me to review for them.


Both website networks being advertised appear to be genuine. (No, I didn't click on any email links. I'm not entirely lacking in brain.) On the other hand, they didn't say which of my several sites they "loved the look and feel" of.

But none of them make sense, anyway. None of them are high-traffic blogs. I have maybe twenty readers, here, most of whom are real-life friends. I have a few more readers over on the weight-loss blog, mostly via KT's patronage. (She, unlike me, is excellent at the whole "community participation" thing. I'm not nearly as introverted as I used to be, but some habits still linger. Even when I'm genuinely trying to participate, I kind of suck at it.) My writing blog doesn't see a lot of traffic, either.


I do occasionally comment on some high-popularity blogs. Very occasionally.  So I guess a robot somewhere snagged my link from those comments and threw me into a database and now I'm getting form letters. Which amuses me.

It's honestly tempting to write back and tell them I'd love to host a contest for my readers. I mean, with my low number of readers, it gives you guys a pretty solid chance at whatever the giveaway is, right?

On the other hand, if I do anything in the way of advertising or "monetizing" my blog, I could eventually run into this problem. So I suspect I'll just hang out here on my non-money-making blogs, continuing to ramble about whatever happens to pop into my head at the moment -- grousing about work and diabetes care and the trials and tribulations of parenting.

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