As a newbie blogger you start off at the ass end of the world.
But over time you get links, hits and comments, and you become more of a presence on the interwebby.
About this time you start to get people contacting you for a varying amount of products.
They are from all sorts of different people, PR companies, new websites, Ad agencies, and they are trying to get you to put their product up, for free.
No one wants to pay you for it, they try and make out they are helping you, or your readers, but most of them are just blatant advertising.
I even had Cricket Australia try and get a free plug once.
Recently I wrote about the Local to Lords competition. I put it on the site, because i thought some of you buggers may want to enter, but I took the piss because they did not offer me any payment for the plug.
That was my way of keeping the balance.
Well Richard from Sportreveiw has shit all over my attempt at pissing off a free plugger.
L&P a soft drink manufactured by coke, that is “world famous in New Zealand” emailed him asking for a free plug, they’d never put it that way, about some cricket game they are doing.
Here are parts of his reposne:
“I got a press release from L&P’s PR agency today on their upcoming BYC cricket tournament. PR’s easy, it works like this:
- Get list of ’sport blogger’ email addresses. For god’s sake don’t bother reading their site to see if they a) do this kind of thing thing or b) hate you
- Send out a mass emailed press release
- Bloggers do your job for you and send that shit ‘viral’ on the ‘internet’”
And then later on he explains how the plug will work on his site.
“This is how it’s going to go on my site:
- Blogger receives mass emailed press release from L&P (disclosure: blogger already thinks L&P should eat bag of dicks)
- Blogger responds with snarky mcsnark snark blog post”
Get over there and read the whole post.
The funny thing is next year, he will probably get the same email.
Oh and that Cricket Australia email i got, they sent it to Beige Brigade as well, because what would a bunch of kiwi fans want more than to be a publicity mule for Cricket Australia.
is The Silly Point, one of the many such – keeps writing to me with regularity.
and he would like to buy an ad space for a sum I would certainly find very appropriate.
while my hardworking ego would like to believe in his sincereity, I cannot help but wonder if he thinks it is clean uncluttered site, – no ads or popups, the elusive virgin –
to get the satisfaction of being the “first one” to succeed to break the defenses -
probably even keep of log of such conquests.
a year ago,
a then flourishing cricket site had almost every bloglinks on their milehigh blogroll.
I was the newbie, I wrote requesting them to reciprocate with mine. three weeks, three reminders later, it did not got on their list – others were appearing but not mine –
after three weeks I took down theirs link on my site.
the site has gone bust now, a new site seems to have mushroomed over it. someone now wants me to “guest write” for him – so short a memory
how the world turns
Us too. We love helping Cricket Australia any chance we get…
fuck em freeloaders. You pay, you play. The only things they can do on this site for free should be commenting. Not that I would care for what those dickwands had to say.
Har, thanks for the link / solidarity Jrod.
Like you say, there was a time when I would have rolled over for ANY ‘proper’ media or PR attention, but the impersonal, clumbsy way they go about it is a total cold shower.
Reminds me, I owe you some designs. Loved the Christ and Cocaine thing BTW.
Chinaman, nice, got to love the cricle on that one.
KC, i would think you’d be their perfect market.
Richard, anytime, I thought i t was genius, but I think anything that has many uses of the phrase bag of dicks is genius. And cheers.