More “Guest Posts”

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I guess “Katrina Manning” (write her, please: katrina.c.manning@gmail.com) didn’t get the memo that EPautos doesn’t publish “guest posts” – i.e., product pitches purveyed as articles. guest post con

This bimbo shill – who wanted to pay me to put her scheisse in front of you – couldn’t even construct a grammatically correct sentence in her pitch (or follow up) letter:

“It’s not a fake article but high quality, original article that your readers will enjoy to read. Please choose from the topics I’ve suggested in my 1st email to you and i will write for it. Rest assure and guaranteed that the article will not promote or mention any business , products, or service.”

Oh, really, Katrina? I mean, I did “enjoy to read it,” but what do you mean by:

“Not a product placement but a guest post article (including one link back to a site in the article body or in the author bio) That’s it. Let me know if this okay with you and tell me the rate for this. To simplify, i will write an article (including one link) and you will be posted it in your site.”

So, the link is not a product placement, eh? Not trying to sell the readers anything, huh?

“Katrina” (per Bat Guano… if that really is your name) tells me:

“After carefully browsing your Eric Peters Autos website, I’ve prepared some topics that might be appealing to your audience, please let me know which topic you would like me to cover and I will be happy to start:

Topic 1: Maximizing Fuel Efficiency

Topic 2: 10 Tips for New Drivers

Topic 3: Accessories for Your Cab Interior”

I marveled… and replied thus:

Dear “Katrina” –

Play straight, ok?

You’re trying to place an ad. You want to use an “article” (or “guest post” or whatever slimy term you want to trot out) as a vehicle to convey a link to the readers – to pitch something that you’re being paid to pitch to them.

And that is an ad.

Nothing wrong with ads…  unless they are purveyed as “articles” or “guest posts.” That is dishonest. And that’s a problem.

Again, we’d be happy to discuss rates, but whatever it is you/your client are trying to sell or promote will need to be clearly identifiable as advertising.

PS: You’re not a journalist; much less an automotive journalist. I am; have been for 25 years… if you were, I’d know who you are. I don’t. Because you’re not. You’re a churnalist working in an SEO sweatshop.

Trust me, it shows.

Kisses,

Eric

EPautos.com depends on you (not “guest posts”) to keep the wheels turning! The control freaks (Clovers) hate us. Goo-guhl blackballed us.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. Newspapers are dying because of the bean counters who are trying to maximize profits for the owners. What gets cut first from a newspaper operation when trimming costs? Editorial positions, i.e., the people who go out and cover the news.

    I saw this happening in the early 1990s when I was let go from my position at an all news radio station. Costs needed to be cut and so they cut me, the boss, because they couldn’t afford me any longer. Since then, that radio station is way down in ratings and advertising revenue.

    Tucson has only one daily nupe now. The other folded because of declining revenue. Our only daily leaves a lot to be desired. Editorial positions cut, photog positions cut. And that leaves very few people to cover the events. How does that serve the community? It doesn’t.

    Today, newspapers are nothing more than fish-wrappers and they don’t do well at that task either because the ink rubs off on to the fish.

  2. I think you nailed it. A sweatshop trolling sites. The grammatical errors suggest, to me, an Asian speaker with limited English language skills. Probably canned responses to everything.

  3. It’s interesting to note the spelling errors and grammar problems. Seems that would be a problem when writing professionally, wouldn’t it?

    Though proof reading and editing seem a thing of the past if you read newspapers and other so called “professional” publications lately. You see so many errors today, that you would have never seen even 20 years ago.

    This in spite of things like “spell check” built into every word processor on your computer.

    I worked for a weekly about 15 years ago, and that paper still had proofreaders at the time. They would find plenty of errors, and were worth the money, not that they were even paying them all that much. So its not like it was that expensive…..

    The problem was they were all semi retired people who came in once a week to proof the paper before it went to pre-press. The youngest was well into her 60’s, and no one was being trained to replace them, like they had in the past. Most were in their 70’s and 80’s, most had retired from full time work with the paper.

    It was how they had always done it over the 70 or so years the paper had been around. When you were finished with working full time, you could keep a once a week gig, proof reading. It worked out great for both the paper and the retirees. They had a ball doing the work (you would hear the laughing coming from that room, probably at our expense), could see their former co workers, make a few bucks. The paper got the job done at a decent price, making it look far more professional. Why would you stop?

    I think the only reason why we still had them, was that the current (second and third generation) management (owned by a family) were waiting out that older generation. They didn’t want to do the extra work it took to have them around, but also didn’t want the flack they would get, had they just let the proofreaders go.

    Frankly the newer family members managers didn’t have any loyalty to employees the older management had. If the older generation was still running the day to day, I probably would still be working there. But since it was the new ones, I got laid off before I was there a year. Some of the proofreaders had been with the paper for decades.

    That’s why I always disagree with people that the internet killed newspapers. Even if the internet didn’t exist papers would still be dying. They are being “managed” to death.

    • richb,

      I find your last paragraph interesting.

      Hard for me to imagine that newspapers — a potentially (if not actual) important source of information — could be mismanaged into oblivion. I always thought that print papers were important — while not as up to the minute as OTA TV — in being able to cover news in more detail than most OTA TV were able to deliver to the public at large.

    • Our local daily paper is replete with misspellings, run on sentences, incomplete sentences, garbled sentences, misquotes, double and triple negatives, undefined acronyms, stories labeled “continued on page 3” that aren’t, so on and so forth. It would be laughable if it were not so sad. The big city papers are grammatically better but many articles are purposely slanted to promote political aggrandizement and perceived social ills.

      Public trust is lost when professionals become so lackadaisical that every day produces a new product filled with mistakes, couched and missing content, and propaganda. Doubt reigns where execution fails, thus the decline of journalism.

      • I think the current ownership of most dead tree pulp outlets is just cynical enough to asume that the current generation of functionally illiterate Americans wouldn’t know a misspelling or grammatical error if it kicked them hard in the nuts, and they’re probably right. More importantly, though, it’s all about the bottom line. Who gives a shit about customers? Their role in the New World Order economy is to fork over what little money they have to big business and be thankful that their sorry, shit-eating plebian asses are given anything in return.

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