I should be a better person than to write this post, but I’m one short of my three-posts-a-month goal, I get a ton of these sorts of requests, and I’m not in line for sainthood. So here goes – I received the following email today:<\/p>\n
\nFrom: Elise Pearson <EPearson@vacationroost.com>
\nSubject: Question About Your Site
\nDate: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:46:37 +0000<\/p>\nGood Afternoon,<\/p>\n
My name is Elise and I manage web relationships for a mountain reservation travel agency called Vail Destinations. I am trying to get the word out about our business, and would love to have it be through a blog like yours. We are flexible with the opportunity, but have found that most people opt to:<\/p>\n
1. Have us write a unique guest blog post for you and have you post it yourself
\n2. Have you write an honest review of our site, what you think <\/p>\nIn exchange we are offering a $20 Starbuck or Target Gift Card. Please let us know if this is something you are interested in. If you have any questions you can contact me at (801) 559-3256.<\/p>\n
Elise Pearson | Online Marketing Coordinator
\nP: 801.559.3256 | epearson@vacationroost.com\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI do love Starbucks, and unlike many people who may take Ms. Pearson up on her offer, I have actually visited Vail<\/a> (in December 2010), so I’ll go with option #2 and write an honest review of what I think, taking special care to ensure that my review has maximal online marketing value<\/a>. I can already taste my lattes and scones…<\/p>\n
\nVail is a truly amazing place with a vast number of lodging options, so visitors should have plenty of choices. Companies in Vail can attract customers by offering great accommodation, excellent prices, or by employing shady and dishonest<\/a> attempts to artificially inflate their results in search engines<\/a>. Even though I’ve never used their travel portal, it seems unlikely that Vail Destinations and its parent company Vacation Roost would promote businesses that cheat customers<\/a>, provide terrible customer service<\/a>, or operate fraudulently<\/a>. They have asked me to write a review for them sight unseen, but that does not imply they are engaging in manipulative online marketing<\/a>, such as one sees with hotels whose rooms pose dangers<\/a> of exposure to crabs, lice, fleas and STDs<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Since I have not actually used the Vail Destinations travel portal it is important to focus on what I can surmise from their unsolicited emails<\/a>. At the same time as Ms. Pearson’s email arrived I also received several spam emails<\/a>, including advertisements for escorts<\/a>, pornography<\/a>, and illegal drugs<\/a>, but Vail Destinations and its parent company Vacation Roost are obviously very different from those internet scams<\/a>. Also, while some might find it suspicious and unusual<\/a> for a company to ask complete strangers to write about their business, what are the odds that they would rip-off travelers<\/a>? Unfortunately I cannot recommend<\/a> them without doing additional research, but clearly they would not want to pay for reviews<\/a> like this one if they were just another crappy travel portal<\/a> that should be avoided at all cost<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I should be a better person than to write this post, but I’m one short of my three-posts-a-month goal, I get a ton of these sorts of requests, and I’m not in line for sainthood. So here goes – I received the following email today: From: Elise Pearson <EPearson@vacationroost.com> Subject: Question About Your Site Date: … Continue reading “I should be better than this”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,45],"class_list":["post-4490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-ramblings","tag-spam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4490"}],"version-history":[{"count":67,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9048,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490\/revisions\/9048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}