Swords & Wizardry Light - Forum

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

How Not to Spam a Blog - Specifically, How Not to Spam The Tavern (Rant Warning)

I got this message on Facebook earlier today:

Random Facebook Dude:
Greets Eric, how goes it? 
Was wondering if you wanted to cross promote your blog with our event by being a part of our supporters program. Please let me know if this sounds like something that might interest you OK? 
Thanks man.  :)
So, a few questions and observations:

Point The First - What event?

Point The Second - What supporters program?

Point The Third - It is most likely The Tavern's reach is a bit greater than Random Facebook Dude and his "our" event. So, what does this supporters program do? What benefit does it offer those that join it? I suspect the benefit is to that of Random Facebook Dude

Point the Fourth - Random Facebook Dude wants me to put The Tavern's reputation behind his mystery event. Why the fuck would I do that without knowing ANYTHING about it?

Point the Fifth - That middle paragraph? Doesn't even mention the blog by name. I suspect it was a cut and paste that was sent to others. Damn it! I might not be special :(

Point the Sixth - On closer look, he appears to be a Kickstarter promoter of sorts. I guess he doesn't read The Tavern.

I have no problem helping creators and publishers in the OSR and beyond. This shit just pisses me off.





11 comments:

  1. First things first, if you are going to ask someone to do something for you, spell their name correctly ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I get regular "would you like to do a link share?" emails.

    Dude, I named it "Blogs I read" for a fucking reason. I don't read your blog, I'm not putting it up there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Greets Derek,

    Let's cross-promote by attaching your blog goodwill to my shady Kickstarter project!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "wonder if it was Stephen H.? He was pestering me and my staff for my real space convention about cross promoting his and our conventions"

      this was on G+ and the poster was correct in his assumption ;)

      Delete
  4. Erik, I think you may have been trolled.

    ReplyDelete
  5. There is a whole cottage industry forming around providing BS support and promotion services to Crowd-funders. Because you blog about it, you were just one of a bazillion who got the spam... alas #nospecialsnowflake

    ReplyDelete
  6. It's not half as annoying as automated spam telephone calls, or people plugging their OSR blogs in your comments section. I would post about that on my blog explorebeneathandbeyond.blogspot.com but my blog's more about OSR rules / ideas / suggestions. I'll make a special effort to avoid doing that in future ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I get these things all the time with relation to basicfantasy.org or my Facebook page for the game. Since we never promote for-profit items, I never have to think about it much.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I got this too. The exact same message, in a comment on one of the SWAp day posts. It was via G+, though. Deleted it from the comments.

    ReplyDelete
  9. My stuff haz good feelz. I like hav ur name linkd with my stuff. That makes bigger good feelz. Good feelz 4 all is great!
    And throw me $$money$$ too. ill share wit u i promise.

    ReplyDelete