Manic's Tips for Becoming a Successful Political Blogger #1: Spamming for Links

Manic published a series of link-begging emails yesterday, and was disappointed at the lack of comments guessing at the identity of the sender... until he received two private messages from two different people who received near-to-exact copies of one of those emails!

Below is Manic's copy, followed by the two others.

Before we begin our lesson, you may wish to check through your email archives to see if you have received a similar email. (Extra credit will be given to those filing a report that shows learning from personal experience.)


EMAIL #1

----- Original Message -----
From: [censored]
To: Manic
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 4:35 PM
Subject: Bloggerheads

> Hi Tim, I've just been looking at your blog and I wondered if you'd like to add
> a link to mine? It's at [censored].
>
> If you do add one please let me know and I'll reciprocate - I'm getting several
> thousand hits a day now, so it should drive a bit of traffic your way.


EMAIL #2

----- Original Message -----
From: [censored]
To: [censored]
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 4:30 PM
Subject: Blog

> Hi, I've just been looking at your blog and I wondered if you'd like to
> add a link to mine? It's at [censored].
> If you do add one please let me know and I'll reciprocate - I'm getting
> several thousand hits a day now, so it should drive a bit of traffic your
> way.


EMAIL #3

-----Original Message-----
From: [censored]
Sent: 29 January 2006 16:44
To: [censored]
Subject: Blog

> Hi, I've just been looking at your blog and I wondered if you'd like to
> add a link to mine? It's at [censored].
> If you do add one please let me know and I'll reciprocate - I'm getting
> several thousand hits a day now, so it should drive a bit of traffic your
> way.


Now that you have the project material in front of you, we can begin the lesson:


Manic's Tips for Becoming a Successful Political Blogger #1: Spamming for Links


1. Prioritising Personalisation

What may not be obvious (due to the need for censorship of details that may identify the sender) is that the sender's email address appeared in both the 'To' and 'From' fields in emails #2 and #3.

What this indicates is that the sender used a common technique for sending bulk email via programs such as Outlook Express (if you want to send a bulk email without revealing the identity/number of other recipients all you have to do is send the email to yourself and BCC the recipients). The timestamp difference between emails #2 and #3 is easily explained by the latter being parsed through a local mailserver.

What should be immediately apparent is that Manic's copy of this email (#1) is personalised.

The sender has clearly chosen recipients he felt worthy of a personalised email, and bulk-emailed the rest with a generic version of this same email.

We will now dissect the body of that email.


2. How to Appear Polite and Generous

"Hi, I've just been looking at your blog..."

Note here how the sender makes a bold attempt at honesty; he does not claim to have been reading the blog of the recipient, just looking at it (and perhaps just long enough to dig out that all-important email address of the author).

"... and I wondered if you'd like to add a link to mine?"

There's a lovely casual tone to this statement, which is only enhanced by the addition of the question-mark; this morphs said statement into a non-threatening request (and possibly also implants a subconscious feeling of warmth via use of the rising inflection made popular by Australian soaps such as Neighbours).

"It's at [censored]."

Here the sender includes his URL, making the task of responding to his request as easy as possible. He has led with 'no pain' before emphasising the gain:

"If you do add one please let me know and I'll reciprocate..."

Jolly good technique; the sender appears to be kindly offering a 'like for like' exchange, and he even goes on to sweeten the pot:

"... I'm getting several thousand hits a day now, so it should drive a bit of traffic your way."

Very clever indeed. Note the use of 'hits' as opposed to 'page impressions' or 'unique visitors'; this allows for the use of a more dazzling number. Also, as the recipient is probably unaware that they are one of many recipients, they are unlikely to consider that they may be exchanging a link on their very short blogroll for a link on an impossibly long one. (The latter type of link will receive less traffic even on sites of equal popularity, through the miracle of 'dilution'. This will be covered in more detail shortly.)


3. Watch Out For Spam Filters

Though one of the emails (#3) was dumped in a junk folder after being classified as spam by the probability-based mail filter SpamBayes, the carefully-crafted message managed to pass though SpamPal (#1) and the in-house spam filter of Gmail (#2) without raising so much as a blip.

Songwriter and marketing/performance expert Jim Steinman will be the first to tell you that this level of acheivement ain't bad.


4. Managing Your Resulting Blogroll.

Many old-fashioned types will try to convince you that your blogroll should be made up of close friends and associates and/or blogs that you read on a regular basis. They are wrong.

Your blogroll can - and should - be as long as you want it to be. What really matters is the inbound links that register in Technorati, and the cumulative inbound traffic that registers in your statistics (and reliable performance-measuring outfits such as Alexa).

Remember; you are only giving the appearance of a 'like for like' exchange; after you have included all of the reciprocal links that you promised, your blogroll will soon be the equivalent of 19 printed pages of A4 paper (making even the shortest post generate a page longer than your arm).

The result? Outbound links will be buried in one very long list, while you will typically be benefiting from inbound links from many, many shorter lists.


5. Managing Resulting Blogroll Requests

If you play your cards right, this can elevate you to a level of reputation where you no longer need concern yourself with the whole begging rigmarole, because success breeds success.

In fact, once you have spammed link-whored cleverly self-promoted yourself into the position of 'leading blogger', you will soon find that is is other bloggers who are sending link-begging emails to you.

Typically, these will be the kinds of trusting fools that begin by linking to you as a sign of good faith before they send their begging email. Then, if you are of a mind to refuse the link, all you need do is claim there is no room at the inn (or simply allow your impossibly-long blogroll to speak for itself).

Manic has spoken. End communication.

UPDATE - *This post is about Iain Dale; all of this spam came from him and proof beyond what has been published on this website can be found here, where an unwitting recipient of the spam has blogged its contents. Manic wasn't going to say anything about Iain being the source of these begging emails ever ever ever... until he discovered that Iain was a spammer... and an ungracious twunt.