WHAT IS GOING ON?! In the past week or so, I’ve gotten 5 messages from people wanting to write crappy-horrible posts for my blog.
From Tim Stevens, tim@socialmonsters.org
From Danielle McCann, daniellehmcann@gmail.com:
From Paul Smith, paulsmith_1989_14@hotmail.com (hotmail, really?! What is this, 1998??)
From Lisa Johnson, lisa@discovermedia.co.uk:
From Ivy Delfin, ivyhdelfin@gmail.com:
ANSWER: NO! Oh, sure. Why don’t I just turn my site into a nightmare tornado of special offers and hard-hitting advertorials?!
I love my three guest posts! Each of them has gotten more views than ANY single post I’ve written. First there was, Orphanage At The End Of The Universe, a Vietnam-born American’s look at his mixed and evolving feelings about his past. Wild World Of Expats provides a Vietnamese local’s take on the Western expats she’s encountered over the years. And finally, Bill Ethridge On Travel Burnout. Pretty self-explanatory.
Paul Smith. (…if that is your real name.) Just for giggles, I actually wrote this guy back. I replied, “Sure! What country/culture would you be writing about?” to which he replied, “I would like to write about China and its rich culture. If it doesn’t suit you, let me know and i can change the topic according to your remarks.” I asked where in China he’s living and – big surprise:
I don’t live in China, however I have traveled a lot there. Here are some examples of my posts. Hope they will be suitable for you. post#1, post#2, post#3.
No, Paul. Oh no, no, no, no. I can’t decide if one post is worse than the next, or if they’re all equally horrible. Here was my response:
Where’d Paul go? Surprisingly, I haven’t heard back from him. I hope he’s ok…
Have other WordPress bloggers been getting these horrible messages? I don’t want to remove my “contact” form, as it’s led to some nice comments, suggestions and conversations. I just wish I could make this spam stop!
**UPDATE** MAY 30, 2013
From Ellen Nicola, Ellennicola1986@gmail.com:
I responded: “Thanks Ellen. I’m glad to hear that you found many of my articles very interesting. What were your impressions of this article from earlier this month: [link to this post].”
Haven’t heard back from her yet.
O hi, Asia! 
Yes, we’ve had that discovermedia email. However is name was Ross. I rather think this person goes under different names. He asked can he purchase advertising with us, which we do accept advertising. I replied back asking for a phone number and he replied back saying “Can I have a contact number to contact you?” Sounds fishey, I replied back a very sarcastic message.
discovermedia appears to be the ambitious one. “No thanks! I’ve discovered enough media as it is!” LOL. Thanks for reading, James.
Thank you for this post! I just found your blog by searching for information about this exact same issue. Seems very fishy to me as well; I got your “Lisa from discovermedia” email in my inbox tool. Online casino games? No thanks.
On the plus side of this experience: I discover this website! Lovely stuff. Cheers from Tokyo!
Thanks, Alisha! Hopefully enough of us will keep saying “hecks no!” to these peddlers of modern-day junk mail.
Hey, cheers for posting this. I just received an email from no other than Ivy, and found your post by searching “Ivy Delfin “, which I did because it was instantly obvious that this was BS. The email I received was very similar to the one yours:
“Great blog.
My name is Ivy and I am currently working with http://www.bounceinc.com.au.
I enjoyed your recent article about “There’s More Than Circus Tricks and Trampolining Waiting for Wawan in Vancouver”.
We were hoping we could publish a blog on your site?
I have some ideas I am working on:
* Massive indoor trampoline universe all about jumping high and landing soft & safe.
* Fly through the air and bounce off the walls with interconnected trampolines and padding to land on.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Ivy”
That’s ridiculous! “Ivy” isn’t even trying here; just copy/pasting from that Trampoline Park’s webpage. There’s no way this kind of marketing-via-blogs works. Can’t wait till it disappears forever. Thanks for sharing, Jacqui!
Ahh I just received an e-mail from them and googled it and found your website. Thanks for sharing. Very interesting blog.
Oh no, they’re spreading! Which one wrote you? (Glad you found the post so easily!)
I received an email from Ellen this week and this was the first thing I found when I searched her email address. Thanks for sharing these emails!
Welcome! Glad the post showed up in your search. I see Ellen is getting around! LOL. Say no to spam!!
Ditto everyone else’s comments… I had the same email and I can’t for the life of me figure out what they are getting out of the deal. Thanks for the post!
O wow, thanks for writing this! I just got one (my first one?) today and googled the email address (which, thankfully, led me here). Do you think they could be some sort of scam to check out valid email addresses? (Seeing which addresses open the message, then pounding them with spam?)
That’s a decent theory. In my case, I’ve responded to most of these fools (sometimes with a link to this post!) and I’ve received no increase in spam. I do have gmail though, which handles spam pretty well.
I certainly hope these solicitations are on the decline. They’re annoying and I can’t imagine how they pay off for the senders.
Thanks for stopping by!!
ASSHOLES!!!!
Just received the exact same email from Paul Smith. Thanks for the heads up. It looks like he’s had a few bloggers take up his offer though; several guest posts show up if you Google his name. They’re not the worst thing I’ve ever read 🙂
Good job spreading the word.
Lisa just emailed me….AHHHHHHH NO. lol
Haha, Paul’s articles made me giggle =)
Just got a similar email from someone called Lucie Chora
[lucie@discovermedia.co.uk]
who offers me $100 for online casino advertisements. Um… no, thanks! 🙂
I just got emails from Danielle McAnn, who says she is working with Ivy Delfin! How crazy.
Thanks for writing this post. I’m new to this and discover media found my blog http://www.fitgirlcode.com his name was John. Glad I googled this before waisting my time!
discovermedia repeatedly contact us – at least 16 times in the last 12 months *sigh*