I replied to a sponsored content email | Hacker News Reader

I replied to a sponsored content email

kevq.uk

51 points0066cc23 comments

> If you scroll back up and look at the agreement Paul and I made in January, there was no mention of me not being able to label the content as “sponsored”.

But they did mention it..

Came here to see if anyone else mentioned this.

Came here to say the same. This guy just wasted Paul's time, and Paul was pretty up front about what he wanted.

Perhaps Kev also didn't read the part of the email saying "Please send a sample of the post you recently published". That could explain why there was a two-month delay, since Paul would have been waiting for him to reply instead.

I think Kev saw the money line and stopped reading… those were both after money was mentioned.

I was confused by this because that text doesn't appear in the article currently.

Time for the equivalent of some git bisect[1] using the Internet Archive..

...it looks like a couple of paragraphs in the article changed[2][3] during 2022-03-06:

  $ diff before after
  36c36
  < There’s a few things in this email that immediately raised my heckles. If you scroll back up and look at the agreement Paul and I made in January, there was no mention of me not being able to label the content as “sponsored”.
  ---
  > When I read Paul’s email from January, I missed the whole ”no sponsored post label“ thing. Reading this new email from Paul with fresh eyes, that part really raised my heckles. I don’t think I would have replied in the first place had I read the original email properly. Silly Kev.
  38c38
  < Also, and this may just be the way I interpreted the email, but the way he tells me to make it live on my site makes it feel like a demand.
  ---
  > Also (and this may just be the way I interpreted the email) the way he tells me to make it live on my site makes it feel like a demand.

[1] - https://git-scm.com/docs/git-bisect

[2] - before: https://web.archive.org/web/20220306084011/https://kevq.uk/w...

[3] - after: https://web.archive.org/web/20220306110240/https://kevq.uk/w...

I emailed the author last night basically a copy of my comment, and then the article changed shortly after. So I guess the author feels slightly bad about it?

TBH, I didn't learn anything actionable or useful from this article. And it's ~900 words-long. Would have lost less time by reading the ~600 article about e-commerce...

Plus you might have gotten a good deal on e-cigarettes!

I own a content business. We publish "sponsored" posts on other sites. They contain original photos, unique information written by an expert, are always 100% relevant to the site's audience, and are always marked as guest posts. So sponsored/guest posts aren't always bad ;)

We find sites that are looking for good content for their audience and are not looking to get paid (but will pay a small editorial fee if asked). The types of sites that will accept any sponsored post are not the types you even want a sponsored post on

Yeah this kinda came off as asshole-ish. Sponsored content is supposed to be mutually beneficial. The first part of the article makes it seem like link-building is some king of taboo SEO tactic instead of regular tool everyone uses...

Personally I find your argument disingenuous at best.

> We find sites [...] that are not looking to get paid [...].

So basically what you are saying is that you are looking for free real estate for hidden advertising.

You get paid by your clients while the sites' audiences are the real product.

> [...] are always 100% relevant to the site's audience [...]

I worked in publishing. I worked with many content farms as well in my time. If I had gotten a dime for every piece of content written by an "expert" (but in reality some poor student in most, a general editor in best cases) I would probably have a nice vacation awaiting me.

"information written by an expert" is a nice claim as long as no one: - needs to define what an expert is - doesn't need the expert to be an expert in the relevant field

Additionally Google (and others) value recency and pushes good content down because it is "old".

As long as there is a valid business being made with the SEOfication of the long tail by pseudo expert advertising disguised as content with the goal of making readers believe it was genuinely written without conversion goals in mind by a neutral party there is very little chance of this situation improving.

First off, I wasn't making an argument, just stating my perspective.

We don't have clients, so you completely don't understand my business.

I stopped reading after the first few sentences since it's clear your experience is working for shitty SEO agencies and you refuse to believe there are legitimate publishers like my company that occasionally do guest posts when it makes sense

If you don't have clients, then who is paying you?

Our affiliate partners and advertising networks because we publish our own content on our own sites. We don't get directly paid for posting on other sites

So guest posts are your funnel? Are they done to attract people to your site?

Are they done to strengthen SEO towards your site?

I don't yet understand the business rational of these guest posts and would like to understand the model better. If what you are stating is a valid business I would love to know this way for publishing to generate a profit better.

They aren't a funnel, they would account for like .0001% of our traffic. It is for "industry outreach" purposes - to help strengthen the link profile of the site (whitehat SEO)

This might be one of the most creative newsletter advertisements I've seen.

As someone who has experience with this kind of thing, I'd advise caution. Last couple of years, some of these companies who pay for sponsored posts will use your post to further try and improve their "SEO" rank.

E.g. Kev publishes that post. Paul goes ahead and purchases blackhat links to the published article (all with the same keyword in most cases) in hopes of 1) signaling that the article is very relevant 2) hoping that Kev's article will build up "seo juice" and boost rankings to his eCig site or whatever.

I've tried to report this crap to Google multiple times, but those sites still sit on page 1 results even after months have gone by. It's such a crappy practice and hurts people who genuinely try and hustle their search marketing by producing good content.

I dunno Kev, your boy Paul was pretty up front about what we wanted and you wasted his time knowing full well you'd never go through with it.

I have wanted to try this for ages, but then send them a long complicated agreement with the buried terms that I'd publish it on a section of the site called 'scams' and use nofollow links.

Feels like if you could get them to go for it you could take their money and be part of running their business into the ground at the same time.

This article has as much value as overhearing an anecdote in a bar. What a waste of time it was to read it.

The e-cigarette link sounds like trying to build google reputation by getting cross linked from different reputable sites. That was my first thoughts when I read what the post was about

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