Advertising winks at blogs
August 02, 2005
"Their site touts the many 'solutions' they offer business looking to boost their web presence, but strangely fails to mention that they’re more than willing to bribe bloggers to get the job done for them.
"It must just be such a new program that they haven’t had the time to write it up for their website, right? Right?"
"(P.S. -- Do you think I’ll get my five bucks for this post?)" (PopPoltics)
I don't usually do this because, well, it's stealing, but here's the whole post. Please visit PopPolitics anyway for future Jaclyn Friedman posts...
"Beware: product placement has arrived. Cruising craigslist’s writing gigs, I found a post suggesting that I could make five clams every time I name-dropped assigned websites in my blog posts. (Interestingly, I can’t quote it directly because the post is no longer there.) I responded to the anonymized email posthaste, inquiring after more details on how the program works. Here’s the response I received:
Thank you for responding to our posting. Your blog has been approved and we would love to start sending you postings. The first posting is for Dot Flowers. Write whatever you like, but at some point in your posting mention the term send flowers. Please link that term to: http://www.dotflowers.com/
Email me back when you have this posted and I will get another subject to you ASAP. Please note that only the above mentioned blog was approved, so the posting must be on that blog. We pay via paypal every Friday. Let me know if you have any questions.
Just let me know if there are subjects you don't want to post or can't.
Thanks,
Brian"A little Googling reveals that 'Brian' is Brian Ratzker, a Senior Web Strategist for online marketing firm USWeb, whose client list includes Dow Jones, Playboy, and Forbes. And that Dot Flowers is, in fact, a project they helped a client to launch."
"Their site touts the many 'solutions' they offer business looking to boost their web presence, but strangely fails to mention that they’re more than willing to bribe bloggers to get the job done for them.
"It must just be such a new program that they haven’t had the time to write it up for their website, right? Right?"
"(P.S. -- Do you think I’ll get my five bucks for this post?)" (PopPoltics)