It seems that there is a rather annoying group of people sending random emails about text link advertising to bloggers. I’ve got some, and Ed Eliot sitting next to me got the same. This wouldn’t be an issue, after all I think I should get some reward for keeping this up for years and fending off spammers and hacking attempts while I’d really just want to concentrate on what to write here. The crux of the matter is the ridiculous terms and conditions these new kids on the advertising block ask for:

• Can you add a link to the following articles … for the lifetime of the web site
• I will pay you $10-15 dollars for each link as a one-off payment

My first confusion there is “lifetime of the web site”. Does this mean I can shut it down tomorrow and claim it caught a cold and died? Secondly a ONE-OFF payment of $10 for an infinite time of showing an ad a client probably pays you at least $100 a month for?

I appreciate that some people try to get a foothold in a very competitive market like online advertising (and I got an email answer like that when I pointed out the slight discrepancy of what other companies pay for a monthly view vis-a-vis the one-off I could spend in Starbucks on a coffee and a muffin) but please be reasonable and don’t think that people who have high-traffic sites didn’t do research what value a text link from their sites has. We do get punished by Google for adding them, too, and it should be worth our while.