I’ve noticed that in the past few months, I’ve been receiving several emails with the same subject line and message but from different names/persons & email addresses. The subject is “Advertising on jaypeeonline.net” and the messages all contain the exact same message:
Hello,
I’d like to inquire if it’s possible to purchase advertising space on your website.
If there is any space available please let me know and we could discuss further details.
I’m looking forward to your positive reply.
Thanks,
John Doe
I receive quite a few legit advertising offers so this wasn’t something new or peculiar to me. Also, the first couple of emails were sent months apart from the recent ones so I promptly replied to them, thinking that the persons were really interested in advertising on my blog. But after I received several more emails that had the same subject line and message, I started to become suspicious.
After doing some research, I discovered that these types of emails are common practice for spammers. They send out these website advertising inquiry spam emails in an effort to acquire the email address of bloggers or website owners. Once they get the email address, they could add it to their own database or sell it to interested parties.
I don’t provide a link to my email address (mailto link) on my blog so these spammers are sending the messages via the Contact page and wait for me to reply to them so they could acquire my email address.
One thing I noticed aside from the same subject line and message, was that the names of the senders were mostly female and they use common English names. Another proof that these emails are not legit, is that I never got any response from the ones I replied to. If they were really interested in advertising on my blog, they would’ve replied to my emails.
I’m sharing this with you guys so that in case you receive these types of emails in the near future, you won’t make the mistake of responding or replying to them even if the notion of earning money from advertising is very tempting. Just delete or ignore those emails.
Anyone else received these types of emails from your blog or website? If you did, were you accommodating enough to reply to them or you immediately found them suspicious and ignored/deleted them? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
[image source: flickr.com/photos/clement127]
To answer your question, yes – I would have pegged them as spam. But remember, I’m a woman and a long-time user of Facebook. I deal with this nonsense daily.
Here’s a slightly more subtle one, though – real advertising opportunities that are not actually legal in all places. I almost fell for that one, but my own spidey-senses kicked in (and you know that the greed factor is low – I mostly don’t bother with ads at all, even AdSense is below the fold and I pay almost no attention to it). But did you know that it’s not legal to advertise gambling, booze, lotteries, etc. in all states? So those online Poker rooms where people play for real money? Nope. Won’t be advertising those on my blog, any more than I’ll be pushing the latest “Ask your doctor or pharmacist about…”
The thing is I receive many legit emails asking to advertise on my blog and some of them look and sound like the one above. The only difference is that they add some bit of information.
Yes, I’m aware of that and that’s why I don’t accept any forms of advertising that have to do with gambling and the likes. Once in a while, 1 or 2 get past Adsense and I immediately block it.
Thanks for the heads up, this explains why I do have email like this :)
That is why sometime I am receiving newsletter even I have not made an opt in
You’re welcome! Glad I could share this information with you guys as well as other bloggers.
Yeah, I’m also receiving some newsletters and other promotional stuff that I didn’t subscribe to.
Me! Lately I’ve been receiving such emails. Then when you reply, it’s either you won’t get a reply back or they will say that they are no longer interested.
Then there’s another one that keeps on sending me follow up emails, bcos I wasn’t able to reply. Then when I replied already, they wil ignore me nalang. Haha!
Thanx for the heads up jp! :)
Hey Jehz, good to see you back online!
Yeah, what you said is true. In my experience, I replied to a couple of those emails and never got any replies. Then I got suspicious when I later received the same emails (same subject & message).
You’re welcome! :)