I just read one of my spam messages from start to finish. I’ll forgive you for thinking I’m bored. I rarely do this. I Just wanted to see how they con people in to their schemes.
It was addressed to the Webmaster (the webmaster of a blog site, as if that needs special skills and qualifications!) and stated that my blog isn’t getting many hits (no shit, Sherlock. Although I’m sure that was a shot in the dark) and I could be missing out on 300 hits per day. Boo hoo.
They knew of a company that could offer me 3,000 hits per day. I didn’t click their possibly virus-laden link but I’m 99.99 recurring percent sure I’d be paying them for the privilege. I’ve seen a similar thing for Twitter where you can buy followers in the thousands. And apparently companies that pay to promote their Facebook Page’s statuses suddenly get hundreds or thousands of hits from places like India, the Middle East and Brazil. Probably not most companies’ target markets.
I’ve also heard it’s good for a writer who’s looking to get published that lots of hits/followers/likes or whatever, are looked on favourably by publishers and agents. But seriously, is that the way marketing is going? Obviously the publishers and agents are aware of the practice and probably know how to spot those doing it.
To me it’s like breaking the bank to hire a Ferrari to park in the driveway as a way to say “Look at me! How good am I?”
I don’t know about other people but I’m not a pretentious wanker. I like to think the relatively few people who follow my blog or Twitter do it because they choose to of their own free will and not because they’ve been paid to do so.
So Mr Spammer, no thank you. I won’t be taking up your offer of multiplying my hit count by10, 100 or 1,000. Even though I intend to publish some time, even if I do it myself, I’d prefer to keep my numbers real.
I find it so ridiculous that nowadays, the worth of a writer is based on their twitter profile. I know there’s truth in that statement because one of my favourite weekly columnists wrote an article about the time her bosses organised a meeting with her to discuss the fact that she wasn’t getting enough follows, favourites and retweets.
I mean, what! She was the only reason I picked up that magazine and guess what? I wasn’t following her on twitter.
Paying for views? No. They’re not real
Yes, that sucks. It seems to be a very sad and artificial world we live in, in so many ways. Sometimes I find myself considering the old adage “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and have to fight it back. Things aren’t that desperate yet and I hope they never will be. I think if it ever came to that, I’d feel the need to declare publicly “I just bought 20,000 twitter followers” just to avoid feeling weird about it.
Good of you to not try and get artificial views. The truth always comes out in the end, and then it just makes the original person look really desperate. I agree that real views, no matter how small, are always going to be worth more than some computer putting in a fake number.
–JW
Absolutely. I’m a little surprised that publishers, who obviously know it goes on and even encourage it, even take it seriously. They are believing their own bullshit. “Oooh! This writer has 100,000 followers so he could sell lots of (our) books but we know he probably bought most of those followers so it’s really quite meaningless…” I don’t get it.
The fact that you’re not a pretentious wanker is one of the reasons I enjoy your blog. That and the periodic astronomy lessons.
You know, I know a couple of incoherent weirdos whose blogs and Twitter accounts have something like 3000 followers, yet they never seem to get comments, likes, or any other indication that anyone ever looks at it. Hmmm.
Ha ha! Thanks Eric.
I think I’ve seen some of those blogs and twits, too!
Yes, I’ve seen blogs and Facebook pages with no comments. I know from experience that maybe 5% of people who read actually comment… so 3000 real followers would = a decent amount of jabber — but nothing. I think it’s the interaction that is more interesting than the number of followers.
I see the number of comments on some people’s posts and wonder how they get time to respond to them all! But I agree it’s the interaction that’s more important than the number of followers, fore sure.
Totally agree with you Richard. I won’t pay for followers. If people follow me, it’s because they are interested in what I do.
Exactly. I’d never pay money for followers.
Please excuse me, I have to get on with my weekly blackmailing and bribery…
(joking!)
The only good thing about that particular spam is that it isn’t porn or “enhancement” oriented.
I barely have time to keep up with posting twice a week and visiting other blogs. So Twitter isn’t even on my radar. I’m quite happy with more interesting interactions with fewer folks on the blog. I am curious, though, how many followers really read most of the posts. With the Reader, WordPress no longer provides accurate stats on views. But unless they change the way views are recorded, I’ll never know.
Are those porn emails spam? Oh…
Yes, to be honest I’m find it takes more time away from actual writing than I’d like. Perhaps I should focus on the publicity side of things when I’ve actually got something closer to being ready to publish.
As for how many followers read posts, I’m guessing small percentage. 10% if I’m lucky, in my case.
View stats: really? It only used to record views. They recently separated visitors from views, even though visitors can’t be measured accurately. Views are direct hits on a page or post. Visitors are identified by IP address. If my son and I both visited your page right now that would show up as 2 views from one visitor because we’re both on different computers behind the same modem and therefore the same IP. Similarly if 100 employees at the New York Times all hit your page, that would be 100 views, 1 visitor. If my friend across the street visited at the same time that’s a separate visitor because he has a different IP (unless he’s stealing my Wifi!)
The visitor count is subject to the limitations of the internet architecture. Nothing WordPress can do about it except improve their assumptions about the timings of views from a given IP. Google Analytics have the same issues.