I don't know about you - but I am fed up with Benjamin Christie who keeps sending emails asking me to link him. Becks & posh has received 3 or 4 to date. I ignore him but they keep coming. I know I can send him an email asking him to stop - but why should I have to? He is unsolicited and persistent. I've decided to mark him as SPAM instead. I know when people start blogging, they are keen to get links and Benjamin's offer seems like a good deal. But look - he doesn't even position his blog roll on his front page like most bloggers do. It doesn't seem like a very fair deal to me. If Benjamin has you listed, do you get many hits from him - I would be curious to know? I am not suggesting you shouldn't go for it if you want to, but since he just sent his first solicitation to our scool, and he obviously didn't spend the time to read what we are all about, it is obvious just out for cheap publicity and trying to sell his book. Please, just think twice before you take him up on the offer and think about what is in it for you.
Dear Food Blog S'cool,
I have just visited http://foodblogscool.blogspot.com and wondered if
you would you be interested in swapping links to my Australian Food &
Chef blog site www.benjaminchristie.com ?
www.benjaminchristie.com has information about our new TV cooking show
Dining Downunder, Chef Articles, Bush Tucker as well as Australian
Recipes.
Also my latest cookbook is now out and available. If you are interested
in selling the book from your site, email me as I pay USD$8.75 per book
sold via your site.
http://www.benjaminchristie.com/article/8/dining-downunder-cookbook
Please send me your link information if you are interested in swapping
or selling my cookbook. My Link information is below and my links page
is http://www.benjaminchristie.com/links
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15 comments:
Can't blame a guy for trying, I suppose!
I've been contacted tons of times by him too and I don't have ANY blogs listed on my site. Just one of those things. Like that chick trying to send me Hefty Serve n Store containers. I swear they have written me at least 4 times...This is the part that kills me:
"So let me cut to the chase: I was browsing around some blogs and saw that you enjoy cooking... which ultimately leaves to leftovers. I'm wondering if you'd like to try the Hefty Serve 'n Store products. They're not on the market yet, but I have an order coming in pre-launch.
The plates and bowls are absolutely free, and in return the only thing my client has asked is that you post a review of the product on your blog.
Ultimately LEAVES to leftovers? Huh?
The funniest offer I have gotten is some goof who keeps telling me how much he likes my site, vinography.com and asking if I will link to his site. This when my email address is cookingwithamyblog@yahoo.com!!
As in all things, I try to find the humor.
yes - can't blame him for trying.
the Hefty Serve'n'Store tenuous bridging of sentences is hilaroius. thanks for sharing.
It could be he's hired someone to promote the site and he's unaware of the spam-like methodology. He (they?) wrote me ages ago when my blog was still pretty new; it must have been well over a year and a half ago. I did exchange links because it helps with the SEO, if you care about that. The ones that get me are the sites that are nothing but links. Those ones go into the trash instantly. Or one site that was merely copied directly from an old (public domain) cookbook.
Amy, I got a funny note a la yours where the person told me how much they liked my site Moveable Feast. I forwarded it to Louisa, saying "I think she meant for this to go to you."
I also added a preamble that I wish I was the person behind her site!
Benjamin Christie eventually gave up on me.
Yeah, he or someone that was working for him contacted me to swap links. He'd just started some new tv cooking show at that time. I have a buried link page and put him there, it was cooking related and I AM interested in Australian spices/herbs and goodies.
It's a one-sided attempt at more exposure for anything new he's trying to do. I don't know what his site is like now, but he had me listed with a handful of others a year and a half ago. I think if he spent SOME amount of time on our blogs, that would be one thing. But he's just using us for hits. I'm going to take him off my buried links page. If he wants me, he can call me. I'm listed in the white pages.
Biggles
just got another one - not single link on their page and totally unrelayted to the subject:
Hello,
I was browsing through the results from a search engine when I came across your site. It has a lot of good information and I was hoping that we could exchange links.Doing so would not only help our regular visitors find other useful pages, but it would also make our sites rank higher in search engines like Google, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. Exchanging links would be free and beneficial for both of our sites.
... I concentrate mostly on Travel and Destination related information and services.
http://www.aaaac.com
"but it would also make our sites rank higher in search engines like Google, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo"
Well, that's honest at least. None of this, "i like your blog, check out mine" line (that is, unfortunately sometimes legit). Straight to the cold, hard accounting truth.
I can't blame Benjamin Christie, but he should stop after one email. I included him, but i include everyone, (and even gave his interesting sounding Aussie spices a plug in a post).
Perhaps all the bloggers in this school should email him, he'd get the point.
Sam's message is a more serious situation - I get a dozen a week. Same form message linking to some link farm with no original content. Please please, don't feed the link farms. They're the pollution of the internet
This is probably part of some "get rich on the internet" package stupid people buy, where the site, the google ad set-up and the spam all comes with your $299 set-up fee.
After some consideration, I believe sending Ben some email may help. I just sent an email letting them know who I was, what I do, my url and what my concern was. That sending out huge amounts of pleading emails for us to link to him is doing more harm than good.
Please take the time:
http://www.benjaminchristie.com/
I will send out one per day. What the hell eh?
Biggles
Hey All,
I just received this:
Thanks guy. I am away at present from Australia and I was not aware of this.
I'll followup with my developer and find out what's happening.
Thanks for the heads up.
Cheers
BJ
---------------------------
It sounds like him. I would think if it was one of his developers, there would have been this long explanation. His reply was short. I dunno, we'll see.
Senior Biggles
I asked him several times nicely to take me off his list of solicitations. it was only after I went ballistic that he finally did stop sending me emails.
I recently publicly slammed Panera for comment spam, and linking to their propaganda blog. It's on my Feb14th entry, if you're interested... and they ended up taking down their fake blog.
To this point, I've just ignored Ben's emails...not because I have anything against him...but because it's just a form letter/email.
If ANY food or wine blogger takes the time to send me a personal email...I'll gladly add them if I like their site.
At least try to make it look like a personal email...I'm not hard to fool!
huh huh
i just got the hefty Serve and Store solicitation mentioned by Am in these coments
I declined, of course, but maybe I should have done something daft, silly & fun with it.
They didn't say you have to write a good review - huh!
Maybe next time
Hi guys, I am interested to have discovered this. Benjamin called for guest bloggers recently and I said I would write a post, even though he was a bit short and almost rude in his e-mails to me. I said I would do a photo tour of Borough Market and he agreed. I spent 5 hours on the post as I visited the market taking photos and writing etc but when I sent it he said that he only wanted to keep two pictures and would have to edit it. I wouldn't have minded doing another post for him or him editing the post if he wasn't so damn RUDE! He never once in our correspondence ever said thank you for the post and just wrote one sentence e-mails each time. I told him that there were no hard feelings but I would keep my post as I put a lot of work into it and would rather offer it to my own readers instead. He made absolutely no specifications for the post beforehand. I am a really easy going person, but rudeness I definitely will not accept.
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