Not That It Will Do Any Good, But….

To all content mills, web-marketing firms, SEO factories and anyone else who thinks that having an article with your “do follow” links in them published on the Amazing Stories website will help your/your client’s business, or that our website is in desperate need of your technical know-how designed to increase our traffic or raise our internet profile:

1.  WE. ARE. NOT. INTERESTED.  That’s blanket and across the board.

2. We do not adhere to the belief that an article that substitutes a proper noun (your product) for perfectly servicible pro nouns that help make things flow is the proper way to write an article.  Yes, we are well aware of the fact that not doing so – not writing to so-called “SEO Standards” – may cost us traffic or linkage from elsewhere and we are perfectly fine with that, because we hold ourselves to higher standards.  Like the standards that say a post should be “well written”, “on topic” and “accessible and engaging”.  SEO speak is frequently, and tiresomely, none of those things.

3.  “Gaming” is not always synonymous with “gambling”.

4.  Publishing an article on any given subject is NOT necessarily an indication that our readers want to rush out and spend their increasingly hard-earned and increasingly limited disposable income on products that you’ve determined are vaguely related to “key words” you’ve identified in our posts.  In fact  most of our readers are here to read the article itself and are quite capable of making their own decisions about when, where and what to spend their money on.  They do not come here to go shopping.  They come here to get AWAY from shopping.

5.  If you claim that you have articles that would be unique fits for our readers and I deign to respond by requesting samples, the proper reply is not “so what kind of articles can we supply you with?”.

6.  Your low opinion of the human species is evident when, in reply to my response that I am not interested, you inform me that you are willing to pay more to get your article published.

7.  If you have such a high opinion of the website and want to spend money, buy a subscription.

9.  If you send me sample articles that are designed to be of interest to my readers:  they should have fewer typos and grammatical errors than the articles we actually publish;  they should also actually relate, in some small fashion, to the content that is actually published on the site.  Which NONE of them ever have.  EVER.  (Side note:  This strongly suggests that, despite the business you are purportedly in, you have no clue about what makes for an appealing article.)

10.  We made a committment to our readers and members that we would not engage in privacy violating behaviors on this website.  Things may be different in your world, but in ours, that kind of committment is not negotiable.  But I will make this promise:  IF the article is well written;  IF the article is on a topic of actual interest to our readers; IF it is not blatantly commercial and IF it does not contain any tracking links, I’ll give it due consideration and, you won’t have to pay me to publish it if I decide to do so.

BONUS:  This post was written so I can reduce my corresponce with the SEO mills by simply sending them a link.

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1 Comment

  1. I get phone calls from these people, promising me more traffic for my website. The latest one was yesterday morning at 7 a.m.
    I ripped ’em a new one.

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