Free & Paid Website Promotion / David Caswell Email

While creating this website I have come across many useful websites that not only contain informative and useful guides but also helped me think about how to create interesting articles to hopefully woo your visitors, however I doubt I will ever do any of that as my talents lie in other fields but feel free to let me know your thoughts.

The other reason for this page was on the 17th April 2009 I recieved what I can only assume {at this point & you will see where I am going in a minute} what is to be a viral email or a scam {of some sort..confused I am}.
Anyway I list it below and my response created and emailed on 19th April after much thought.

From: webpartners@xxxxxx.com
Sent: 17 April 2009 14:22
To: webmaster@madbug.co.uk
Subject: madbug.co.uk

Hello. I`m David Caswell, CEO at xxxxxxx.

I`ve just been searching for potential partners and having seen your website
madbug.co.uk I thought I`d drop you a line to see if you would be interested
in a relationship with our site xxxxxx. xxxxxx.com is a fast growing
UK games community focused exclusively on trivia, puzzles and brain games
where visitors can play for fun or for cash prizes .

We had a couple of ideas which I hope you will find useful:-

1) We can have our editorial team research and hand write some content for you
to add to a page on madbug.co.uk. We will agree a subject with you that is
relevant to both of our sites (it won`t be a sales pitch for us!) and will
include a single simple text link back to a relevant content page on our site.
The content will be uniquely written for you and will not be re-used
elsewhere. It should be helpful to your visitors and of course the search
engines, as will the presence of a relevant link back to us. Hopefully we will
also benefit from the link in the longer term.

- OR -

2) We can exchange links with you, directly from a relevant content page on
braindash.com. We will explain where links are located on our site (on
properly indexed and ranked pages) when you reply - we don`t have a links page
as such - we link from the most relevant page to each partner.

There are of course no costs for you associated with either approach.

*** IMPORTANT - GETTING A QUICK RESPONSE *** I have found that email isn`t
always as reliable as everyone thinks plus I`m either out or in meetings most
of the time. We have therefore created a simple and quick-to-use response page
that provides detailed information and answers to questions on the various
options and allows you to send messages to our team . . and much more! You can
access it here:-

Page: http://www.xxxxxxx.com/response.html
Your Access Code: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Of course I know that some people prefer to reply via email which is
absolutely fine and I`ll reply as quickly as possible.

REMOVAL
If you feel I should not have sent you this email, I`m really sorry - please
just reply with REMOVE in the subject.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Kind Regards - David Caswell
CEO, www.xxxxxx.com

The above email got me thinking, is this a common occurance or am I just a lucky person, anyway upon further investigation {I spoke to my brother ;-)} I found out that the email seems to be a generic email spurious or not it got me thinking even more.
Google was our friend if you search for the first line of text on the email ("I`ve just been searching for potential partners and having") and check out the results. This is the link you find:

http://andreinchile.com/2009/03/19/i-am-getting-some-easy-to-resist-advertising-deals-offered-for-andreinchilecom/

Easy to resist obviously, but I am a little more inquisitive than that...

I did manage to find some others of the same type with little variance. (and different search variables)

http://www.screenpages.com/ecommerce/archives/000458.html

Although this seems to be an incomplete thread about an email, yes formatted exactly the same as ous, it still adds weight to the fact it looks more suspect the more occurances of the same thing you find.

This one actually changed my perspective on the whole email:

http://www.mickipedia.com/?p=1384

Ido actually think these emails are produced from a 'general' programme which you can purchase on the net for various amounts of money {depending on what you want} - the one I checked out was called linkmachine it seems that for 'free' you can spam to your hearts content, is spam too harsh a word? {they do have differing level of spam control..sorry thats that word again}

Sorry back on track.....

Ithought in conclusion to all my reading about this email I would respond after all they had my webmaster email address already didn't they and as I have the facility for 'FREE' promotion without even a link back I thought I would throw the door open to them to see if I could provoke a response.

From: webmaster@madbug.co.uk
Sent: 19 April 2009 15:11
To: 'webpartners@xxxx.com'
Subject: RE: madbug.co.uk

Hi David,

Forgive me for being a little suspicious about your email below, especially after searching the internet and finding several other exact emails from different companies to other people offering the exact same options as the ones detailed below.

Whereas I find the idea of a link exchange etc of interest I thought I would email you back as email is my preferred form of contact :)

What I would like to suggest is that you register on my website using the promote menu which will enable you to activate a membership {all free of course} and then upload an image 80*70 along with your website details and a description of your website and what it does, this will then enable me to prove if you are actual or not and then I may be interested in a link exchange, although by then you will already have one on my website :)

Eitherway forgive my approach but these days you cannot be too careful.

Regards

Paul.

Well we got a response, a little expected to be honest as it ends all communications with them and possibly stops any potential further issuses arising. As detailed below:

From: webpartners@xxxx.com
Sent: 21 April 2009 10:22
To: webmaster@madbug.co.uk
Subject: madbug.co.uk and xxxxx.com

Hello Paul,

Many thanks for your note. We really try hard to check all sites when identifying potential partners but as with any process it isn`t perfect and we occasionally target sites that we really shouldn`t. Our sites are not relevant to each other so search engines might penalise any form of linking.Please accept my sincere apologies for our having missed this when we initially contacted you and my assurance that we won`t bother you again.

Sorry again for the inconvenience.

Kind Regards - David Caswell

CEO, www.xxxxx.com

I chose to remove all records of the company name as unless it is on my terms I don't really want to promote them ;-)

After checking out the site mentioned in the email {my copy} it would seem that they wouldn't be in need of any additional promotions and they are part of a bigger organization.
Ihope this is useful to someone when doing exactly what I did and search for the reasons.
At the end of the day if you get one like it make your own decision!

The end....

Scam or not - you decide.

Funny Story