Time to cash in
Wednesday, June 4, 2008Big time.
I’ve just discovered the following e-mail in my Junk folder. How could I have missed it!? Such a stellar opportunity!
Hi, We've seen your website at http://www.rusiczki.net/blog/... and we love it! We see that your traffic rank is 2070406 and your link popularity is 35. Also, you have been online since 11/9/2003. With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month to advertise our links on your website. If you're interested, read our terms from this page: --== OBVIOUSLY REMOVED ==-- Sincerely, Nikolaos Koufakis The --== REMOVED ==-- Network</p>
Of course the e-mail comes from a weird looking Yahoo address but this means nothing. Serious companies always send their mails from Yahoo addresses. So truly hyped, I click the link in a hurry. A friendly female voice greets me enticing me to add those links to my site and I can win 4800 in a month. 9600 the second month. And then it get into the sci-fi territory speaking about monthly earnings that are twice the price of my car. And all this for just a few links listed on my site. Sounds too good to be true? Maybe a little.
OK. After listening to the message and being all full of quick cash adrenaline I start reading the site:
After millions of dollars invested and over 2 years in development, we've just launched the fastest growing program since Google Adwords and as viral as Hotmail.</p>
Hm. Quite weird there was nothing about them on TechCrunch…
Over 300,000 people have visited this page in the first week and thousands are joining every day! Growing faster and faster every minute, this program propagates extremely fast.</p>
Of course, spam e-mail is a highly effective way to attract potential victims partners.
And even if you only show our links for one month, we'll keep on paying you that $4,800 EVERY MONTH! *</p>
Holy crap! I’ve almost entered an uncontrollable money frenzy at this point. But waaait a minute. There’s a footnote. I see the little asterisk. Let’s scroll down:
* These figures of earnings are examples to help you understand the earning potential - You can make more or less. There are no guarantees of income.</p>
Aha. So getting past the bullshit most likely I’ll get nada. Zilch. Nothing. And for this nada I give them (or their customers) valuable inbound links for 1 month. Or for however long it takes for me to realize I’ve been scammed. Well, thank you. I think I’ll pass.
Anyway, from now on I’ll sleep much sounder knowing that someone out there “loves” my website. Yey!