Press Releases
Despite the fact that we travel bloggers have voiced our dislike about press releases at various travel blogging conferences, I am STILL receiving press releases. Half the time I don’t know how I ended up on their hit lists in the first place, but it really ticks me off.
Take a look at this website. It is not a travel news website or an outlet for your announcements. It is a personal blog about my backpacking experiences. When you send me a press release it makes me think that you haven’t grasped the point of my site at all.
Most individual travel bloggers are writing about their own adventures, posting photos to inspire other travellers and sharing tips to help people travel smarter. They are not regurgitating press releases!
Weird SEO emails
Any emails that say something along the lines of “I have helped hundreds of people increase their traffic and get you ranked #1 on Google” go straight in the Trash.
Generic Emails
Emails that begin “Dear Webmaster…”
Emails that are heavily misspelt
Generic emails where my name and website URL have been inserted into the missing blanks. Even worse is when they have inserted the wrong name and the wrong website!
The “I’m Doing You a Favour” email
I also receive emails written by people who try to convince me that they are going to be doing me some huge favour offering ‘free content’…
“I won’t be charging you a penny, all I require is a link to my company website”. Damn right you won’t be charging me a penny, I’ll be charging you.
If you’re a company or business, read my Advertise Here page, or if you’re a genuine blogger, then I’m up for guest posts and link exchanges. Otherwise, I’ll write my own stuff thanks.
SPAM comments
These are some SPAM comments that were filtered recently by Akismet:
(On a picture of Will and Kate at the Royal Wedding) “I especially like your last paragraph – and I did start a blog – two in fact – just a few months ago! I always write letters to my children at Christmas – sometimes more often, but at least once a year. They know their letters will be in their stockings! Probably wouldn’t do anything you said not to – just a little bit inhibited! But that’s just me. Congratulations on being freshly pressed!”
“greetings, outstanding blog site, and a great understand! one for my bookmarks”
“A great deal of of the things you bring up is astonishingly legitimate and it makes me wonder why I hadnt looked at this with this light previously. This informative article seriously did turn the light on for me personally as far as this fastidious subject goes. But there is a single fastidious factor I’m not automatically too comfy with and whilst I try to reconcile that with the main thought of the issue, allow me see what all the rest of your respective visitors have to say.Extremely properly done.” WHAT?
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LOL! I love the The “I’m Doing You a Favour” email, so nice of them not to charge you a penny for posting their advertising on your website! Some of the SPAM comments are truly hilarious, such as the ones saying that they’ve been looking for my website for all their life (!!!) or when they leave comment on just a photo and they thank me for the very useful explanation that sheds light on a very sensitive matter!
I guess all bloggers can relate to this. The bane of our lives. Some of the trackbacks I get are so poorly written I can only assume lots of blogs out there allow unmoderated comments/trackbacks. I’m not actually running Akismet yet, the Javascript tick box on my comments page does quite a good job on its own.
“I won’t be charging you a penny, all I require is a link to my company website”. Damn right you won’t be charging me a penny, I’ll be charging you.”
hahaha love the rant, I have to sift through a lot of shit too. However I’m happy because I do get some good in the inbox now. Maybe I’m just in the honeymoon period of self-employment?
“I won’t be charging you a penny, all I require is a link to my company website”. Damn right you won’t be charging me a penny, I’ll be charging you.”
hahaha love the rant, I have to sift through a lot of shit too. However I’m happy because I do get some good in the inbox now. Maybe I’m just in the honeymoon period of self-employment?
“I won’t be charging you a penny, all I require is a link to my company website”.
I get these too! I always send them back an email quoting the fee for advertising on the site, and they usually never respond.