Be a share millionaire! Tell the world!

The reason I run this silly travel blog is because I love the great opportunities that come from it. I’ve had so many great experiences that I never thought were possible.

But with that yin, must come a yang. When your stuff is out in the online space, this presents opportunities for unsolicited emails from all sorts of strange types that consume time that you will never, ever, get back!

Don’t get me wrong – I hear from great people all of the time and I like the opportunities they bring.

However, my website attracts people who want all sorts of dodgy requests fulfilled. Things businesses wanting free promotion or links for nothing in return, or sponsored posts where there is a generous budget of $10 to pay for your time.

It would be great if I could make a crapload of money from such advertising. The thing is, sometimes the travel industry is pretty stingy and want you promote someone else for free!

I can’t remember the amount of times where some PR types contact you wanting you to share their link/infographic/etc for one of their clients on my website/social media channels for nothing in return.

So this article is featuring some of the funny requests I’ve received over the years, and all of these are true. Some of the names have been changed or deleted to protect the guilty!

By the way, if you’re a PR type who has come across this page, it didn’t happen by accident! If you want to attract long term internet traffic that has an indefinite shelf life to your brand, show me the money and contact me!

Alrighty! try not to laugh at some of these!

The ‘I Want Free Advertising’ Pitch

Seriously.

Why the hell would I want to promote your company for free? I even have large multi-national companies asking for free advertising, and one would think they’d have a massive budget for promotions.

Honestly, when these emails are sent through to my Inbox, think what’s going through my head! Usually, things like ‘so what?’ and ‘what’s in it for me?’

Anyway, here are some pieces of ‘I want free advertising’ gold!

I am captivated by the ingenuity of http://www.thetraveltart.com/ that serves its purpose, you’re outstanding, nevertheless this site has a high quality structure and value. With that, I truly believed I found a site to contribute something that counts. If by any chance you’ll allow me to collaborate with you, I would be delighted to write a quality content with a topic related to your website. Images are provided too. You are also free to edit the article so that it will adhere to your writing tone and trademark.

We are promoting tourism in [country] and found your website would be ideal to share bespoke and unique content with about things to do when visiting. Are you interested in receiving and sharing unique and relevant travel content? The content provided is written by our in-house professional writer and the featured piece would be tailored to your website and relevant to your readers and their interests. If you prefer you could suggest a topic for our content writer to create and we can get that unique piece content to you for you to share. If you would like to see examples, you can find several on our blog.

I visited your blog and was wondering if you would allow me to contribute a post on it. I would really appreciate if you would give me an opportunity to share the article with your readers. The content is unique and fresh. I am pretty sure your readers would love reading this article. Please let me know if you are interested in this piece 🙂 I’ll send over an outline with title.

I am [insert name here]. I am working for [company deleted]. We are a company that provides all kind of boats around the world with the best services. We would like you to put an article with our webpage link in your excellent webpage in order to offer to your visitors the opportunity to know one of the best boat charter company and on the other hand it would be good for us to increase our internet traffic. We also provide touristic information of more than 250 destinations and detailed information of more than 15.000 boats. For further information you can visit us on..

Hi There – I represent a number of clients who may be interested in guest writing on your website. We specialize in magazine quality content that gets liked and shared and passed around the internet. We would provide the content, viral traffic and a sponsorship fee to you. All in exchange for a simple link back to one of our clients. Please let me know if you’re interested in such an arrangement and I’ll send over further details and some article ideas for your site!

Hi there, I am the Sales and Marketing Manager at [company]. I was browsing your website and thought that you may be perhaps interested in publishing the infographic about [insert infographic here] on your site as I think your readers would find it quite interesting. If you do decide to publish it, all I request is that you provide a link to my site in the post in which you publish it. If you have any queries at all about the graphic, let me know as I would be delighted to explain.

By the way, check out my satirical travel infographic about travel infographics!

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The Plain Ignorant

Sometimes, people just can’t read. Or they have no idea on what I do! Looks like there isn’t much time in the world..

Hello, How are you? I was wondering who is the best person to contact regarding advertising?

Hi, I hope you are well. After reading your blog, I think you may be interested in a project I run that would be great for your site. We are looking for partners that we can place a page of our high quality editorial content with, in which the article will be written directly to a bespoke brief produced by you. In exchange we would like to place a link back to one of our blue chips client’s sites. We endeavour to produce the highest quality content for our partner sites. I can assure you that all of our clients are recognised corporate brands, so the quality of your site will not be affected by the link within it. I’m sure you receive many e-mails similar to this, offering services at the lower end of the quality spectrum. We have worked on a high end proposition, we are content providers not spammy link builders. Please visit our website so you can get more of a feel for who we are and what we do.

I’ve even had people get my name wrong. They managed to mention my website name correctly, but they addressed me as ‘Dear Jade’. First time someone has managed to stuff up my name and gender at the same time! Needless to say, I returned the favour with a free delete! ;P

Those who use Humour

I do take notice of these – because it means they’ve at a go at trying to find out who I am and what I do! I usually send back a half decent reply!

I actually came across your site bizarrely when in search of a Kangaroo’s ball sack pouch – it was a particularly boozy conversation that got out of hand!

Hi Anthony, I stumbled upon your page and your hair definitely caught my eye as well as your posts. I read through your advertising info and I don’t have a problem meeting any of your guidelines. I don’t have crappy content and I’m definitely not pointing back to a crappy website but yes, I would like to have a dofollow link to a company in my article if that is still acceptable. Let me know what you think and if you’re open to a ongoing partnership. Thank you!

And then, there the ones who I think are joking – but probably aren’t:

Hi Anthony, I need you to be my business partner. Attached is my proposal.

I’m very much excited to do business with you.

Adult and Gambling Sites! Including ‘Reputable’ ones!

These make my head shake! Really, why would I want to promote something from these shonky online neighbourhoods?

Hi, We’ve been looking over your website http://www.thetraveltart.com, I work on behalf of a reputable gaming company here in the United Kingdom. We would be very interested in purchasing advertising on your website in the way of either a homepage text link or sponsored post. Could you please let us know your rates for any of the above that you offer?

“Hi I’m contacting you on behalf of a popular Bangkok site and blog (I should have seen this coming like a freight train). We would love to have an opportunity to talk a little about our service in a guest blog that you can post on your site.” I was offered 1000 Thai Baht (about $35) for it. Clicked on the link which was placed in a tinyurl shortener that opened to a site that contained the words “Viagra, Girl and Escort”. But even better, this came after! “But rest assured the content we send you will be clean, professional and pg-13. If you’re interested please get back to me promptly and we can quickly set something up and I can send the money to any Paypal account you’d like me to. IF things go smooth and if you’re interested, we can do more with you, perhaps even once per month! If we see good conversions from the post, we may even purchase an ad banner from your site.” Wow, that’s 2 minutes of my life I’ll never get back..

But when being spammed, spam back – here is my Canned Response for Sponsored Posts!

You just never know. Maybe this canned response might land me a 7 figure sum one day!

Thanks for considering The Travel Tart. Out of respect for my other clients, I am unable to work for you free of charge. I’m sure you wouldn’t ask a newspaper, magazine, TV or radio station for free advertising. From a marketing point of view, I can assure you that paying one well-ranked blogger like myself will bring your brand better results than the 100 non-paid bloggers who will say yes to your proposal. Please let me know what your marketing budget is for me to promote your client and I will consider your proposal. My stats and social media reach speaks for itself – tens of thousands unique visitors per month for the website, 1.8 million YouTube Channel views to date, over 26,000 followers on Twitter, over 5,400 Facebook page fans, over 4,000 Google+ circles, 1,200+ LinkedIn connections, and over 1,100 Pinterest followers with over 130,000 views of my pins per month. I have attached my media kit which shows how I attract long term internet traffic, including that to sponsored posts.

There you go. If you ever had a reason to hate email, you definitely do now!

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Once again, if you want to throw some advertising dollars at me, contact me now!

What about the other website owners out there? What shonky requests do you receive?

Let us know and make the world laugh!

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