My favorite spammer was the one who offered me $125 to link to his site–but only if I embedded it in a post in a way that would seem “natural” and did not disclose that it was a paid link. He provided an example from another well-known blogger (one I was shocked would agree to such an offer). When I replied with my standard reply that the WordPress.com TOS forbid such paid links, he responded: “So tell me this, how does anyone need to know it was a paid post? You are just writing about what you write about and somewhere adding in a link.” He really didn’t understand why I wasn’t willing to deceive my readers.

Virginia, yes, I realized (afterward) that some people might be totally rebuffed, and I am concerned. I just hope that the ‘value proposition’ explanation shows that I don’t want people soliciting unjustified web traffic, but always welcome legitimate correspondence.

It is difficult to both encourage readers and comments, but then to keep out those that don’t really read your blog. If you address it in your blog, as you have here, will you turn off some potential readers (and perhaps potential clients down the road)? Then again, you have done a good job of delineating your blog with this post.

I have noticed an uptick in this particular kind of stupidity, but then stupidity’s like the air inside one of those circus-clown balloons: a decrease in one part of the universe just means an increase somewhere else. So probably phony Facebook invites or messages from friendly Russian women are down at the moment.