I tried to buy a post on TechCrunch.com

But seriously, how do you buy a post on tech crunch?

Well maybe not TC, but I'm under the impression that articles and even news posts are for sale, albeit not so directly.

I know a woman who does interior design in north east (very small no employees) and got feature in Australian Vogue. Surely there is no vogue editor in Australia scouring the suburbs of NY to find a rising star in the interior design world.

Googling around I see claims you can buy a non US vogue feature for around 20k. Are these scams as well? Is there a PR agency that could get me on NYT? Lets be honest, a lot of their articles are written as ads anyway

Does TechCrunch publish paid advertising that looks like stories? Good for them if they don't.

Almost all of the "press releases" and stories out there about companies, like Forbes for example, are paid for by the company. The best way to combat this would be for name brand companies to stop doing paid stories.

I'm pretty sure you could have gone directly to TechCrunch and paid them. Eliminate the scammer.

Essentially, fashion, travel, "entertainment" and such magazines and newspaper sections are essentially paid placement. Sometimes explicitly, but when your book is mostly bought for the ads anyway, big advertisers and freebies (free hotel stays) get you press. Conversely you'll never see a big expose (e.g. sexual abuse in the the world of fashion models) because that would ruin the vibe.

The tech press used to be the same but it has decayed even beyond that.

I'm not even sure I can say that this is a bad thing. It's not like they are even pretending to be journalism.

I never really understood those. Many "online reputation" agencies promise articles on Forbes and many other publications. not sure if any of them actually work