Well, with close to three-thousand visits to my blog since April I must admit that it's gotten a bit more attention than I expected.
What really freaks me out is when companies contact me from out of the blue for inappropriate advertising opportunities. Way back in May I did one (and only one) entry about sports (hockey to be precise, found here: http://emblogificationcapturedevice.blogspot.com/2010/05/best-game-you-can-name.html), and just a few days later this was sent to me:
Dear Webmaster ("Who is this Webmaster? I am no Webmaster, I am the Keyholder!!!"...sorry)
My name is Dierdre (name changed to protect the stupid), and my company Pushy-Interwebs (name changed to protect it's clearly fly-by-night nature) represents online sport sites in various domains. We are looking at reputable sites to offer them profitable opportunities to help promote some of my clients sites.
We would like to know if you are interested in working with us on this.
For further details please don't hesitate to contact me.
Cheers,
Dierdre Brainsample
Advertising Consultant
Business Development Department
dierdre.brainsample@pushy-interwebs.com
Well, never one to discount something outright I replied back with the following:
Hello, Dierdre.
I appreciate your interest in my blog but had you given even a scant cursory glance at some of the other entries, you would clearly see that sports is a topic that I will scarcely, if ever, revisit. In fact it's very likely that the content of the entry that prompted your email will never be mentioned again.
Having said that, I would certainly review any information you can provide about this opportunity.
Thanks in advance,
David Pretty
NO REPLY
Then in August this inexplicable exchange occurred:
Hi David Pretty,
I am Trina Echoears, I work for Cyberdyne, Inc.
Could you please mention about our Cyberdyne Operating System Optimizer on your blog.
http://cyberdynelovesyou.com/products/systemoptimizer/system-optimizer.html
I will give you a full version in exchange.
Sincerely,
Trina Echoears
Well, I mulled this over for half a second and shot this back:
Hi, Trina.
Thank you for your interest in "You can't Get There From Here".
I might suggest, however, that if you'd taken a few fleeting moments out of your clearly busy day to scan over a few of my entries you might have picked up on the complete and total absence of references to computer software or reviews of the aforementioned products.
I'd go so far as to say that the time you would have saved composing and sending the email below would have been better served reading just a few paragraphs of my work versus trying to hone your penchant for Jedi Mind Tricks.
Having said that, I have been using the trial version of your product for the past few days and although my computer isn't operating any faster it also hasn't become self-aware, tried to murder me in my sleep or attempted to tap into any nuclear missile defense grids.
As such, despite the fact that I've never mentioned software in my blog entries (and never intended to) I'd be more than happy to embed an ad for the Cyberdyne System Optimizer on my landing page.
Let me know if this would be suitable.
Thanks for your interest and have a great day!
NO REPLY
Finally, just recently I got a package of information from Google AdWorks. I'd already set myself up with AdSense, which is supposed to take the content of your blog and post appropriate ads which readers might have some ungodly reason to click on. If a certain amount of readers do this (I estimate it would need to be about forty-eight to sixty-thousand), then I might earn a check back from Google which would provide enough scratch to buy that pack of gum I always wanted.
Well, that's all well and good, but the irony isn't lost on me when I go off on an 11-part tirade ripping Sears a new corn hole only to spy a ginormous ad for www.sears.ca hanging over my comments box like some sort of blood-engorged stirge. Oh, irony thou art truly ironic!
Nevertheless, I got a package of information from Google recently asking if I wanted to use a free $100.00 credit for AdWorks which would put my l'il ole Emblogification Capture Device at the top of the virtual pile of results if anyone searched keywords like "blog", "employment" or "crackpot".
So, with due diligence, I followed the link, created my one hundred and seventy-fifth new website profile since leaving work in April and then redeemed my $100 coupon. Basically it was my intention to drive it into the ground for about ten days (or until my credit ran out), hopefully pick up a few new readers and then drop the program like it was hot.
Well, great idea in theory but not so good in practice. Turns out, for the aesthetic purposes of the ad, the entire URL address could only be thirty-five characters. Mine was a whopping forty-nine!
I tried every possible work around with no luck, so I just abandoned it.
Then, a few weeks later I get a phone call from some dude with Google AdWorks located in Arizona. Curiosity piqued, I called him back and we had a lovely little chat about my little syntax hiccup.
"Well, I'll see what I can do to pare down the name of the blog," I said. After all, fourteen of those forty-nine characters were not of my choosing like the http prefix, the blogspot.com and other irrelevant mush. What the eff did I need that crap for?
Well, I went back in, mucked around for a bit and came to the conclusion that he wanted me to pare down my blog title! What?!? Ditch Emblogification Capture Device? And change it to what? My original title of You Can't Get There From Here had already been taken when I started. There couldn't be any other title. It was what it was! What else could I possibly call it? This Is Dave's Blog Entry?
Hey, wait, that's actually not bad. Crap! And it's just the right amount of characters. And I just thought of this now!!? F#$%, I'm such an idiot!
Errrrrr, I mean, NO! Was he nuts? Right now if someone "Googles" the name of the blog, it's the first result to come up! Not that anyone would ever do that on their own in a million years, but since April I've been doing a sort of grass-roots advertising campaign by leaving otherwise blank business cards lying around the HRM with Emblogification Capture Device cryptically printed in various fonts.
The AdWorks dude soon called back and left a message for me, asking how I was doing in neutering my blog's name. I couldn't bring myself to call him back and explain in some lame, pretentious, artsy temper tantrum that I can't change the name of the blog because it would be like changing the name of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to Benji the Hunted.
After he left literally a dozen voice mails I finally picked up on the last one, just as he was promising with a straight voice that this was "sure to be the last message". I snatched up the phone and blathered in quick succession that I would, in no uncertain terms, rather die than give up the name of the blog and that Google, yes, Google needed to find some internal solve to get over this creatively inane forty-nine character limit.
He waited me out patiently and then assured me that the advertising URL and the actual URL were two totally different things. He told me he was going to email over a link which would allow him to view the format of the site address so help me pare it down while retaining the original name of the blog.
I breathed a sigh of relief. That was, until his next question...
"So, when we get this all squared away, have you given any thought as to what your daily advertising budget will be?"
I let a beat pass. I'd already shown earlier that my hand of cards was composed entirely of Jokers, so I decided to lob that conversational grenade back into his foxhole.
"Daily advertising budget? Um, well, what would you recommend?"
"Well, on the very minimum end of the spectrum, how does $11.00 a day Canadian sound?"
It was now my turn to let the crickets have a solo.
"Uh, yeah, listen, um..Ryu (name changed to protect the oblivious), I don't know if you actually read my blog, but it's basically about an unemployed clown bitching about his past jobs, banging on the drum all day and playing dress-up."
"Oh," he said.
"Yeah, and to be perfectly honest, I was just gonna use up the $100 credit and then drop it, unless all those schizophrenic Sears ads started to may off like loose slot machines in a moment of karmic payback..."
Ryu from AdWorks cleared his throat and then proceeded to gingerly navigate out of our suddenly pointless conversation.
"Oh, well, if that's the case, then let me just pass you along to another department that works with...smaller scale (translation: non-existent) budgets..."
I politely took the number down. Before I hung up, I just had to ask:
"Ryu, why would someone send this to me? I mean it's not as if my site is based around gold for cash or online sales of LE 3-D televisions. Really, why did I get this mailer in first place?"
"Oh, likely it's because...you're did you say you were located again? Up in P.E.I.?"
"Um, close, Nova Scotia."
"Well, it's likely our marketing department thought that your region was untapped, so to speak, so you likely were a part of a mass mailing."
Mass mailing? Really? I suddenly felt so unloved.
NO REPLY
EPIC: I'd whore for Cheap Trick anytime...
FAIL: Did these things get sent to me because people didn't read or because they couldn't because they "lost their glasses"? Here's the indescribably bizarre Pete Burns, lead singer for the 80's pop band Dead or Alive humiliating himself on British TV as part of Celebrity Big Brother in 2006...
No comments:
Post a Comment