In my Inbox this week: In which Fran is an unprofessional blogger

This week’s inbox action has been truly outstanding.

Not in a good ‘we will pay you lots of money to do this!‘ way, but in a consolatory ‘well… at least you’ll have material for a blog post from this‘ way.

NB – If you’re confused about what these emails are going on about, you can check my first post on this subject here, which explains in more depth what a guest post is, and why these people are emailing me, as well as being quite amusing in a way.

Recently there has a been a load- I was going to say a flurry but it’s way more annoying than that, maybe an avalanche? Or perhaps a deluge. That’s perfect. But around 10-20 a day, often more – of emails from SEO folk. The vast majority of these emails are offering $5, $10 or maybe even up to $25 to post their barely legible, AI written content with dodgy links on my blog.

What fun!

It may be something to do with the Google algorithm changing to favour Google-owned forums like Reddit over content websites and the subsequent nosedive in organic traffic across the board (which is shit, let me tell you), or it might just be that time of year. Whatever it is, it’s getting on my tits.

Although I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth (everyone’s got a price, and if you don’t you’re lying) neither am I reliant on this for income. So, at least for the moment, I can concoct a high number or, if I’m busy, freely tell them to piss off without wondering how I’m going to feed my family. Which is nice.

These are the kinds of emails I’m talking about

(You can click to make them bigger, but I imagine you get the gist).

This is the type of response I get if I don’t reply:

And the kind of response I get if I do:

I haven’t chosen any particularly exciting or notable emails here. These are just some recent ones, all from yesterday in fact.

What a lucky girl I am!

Some get the message and stop and you don’t hear back from them. Others will come back and offer you one or two dollars more, like that will swing it, and then some are very put out that you dare to refuse their sweet, sweet offering.

(I apologise for my overuse of emojis. I feel like sometimes it’s the best way to really ram the message home).

My very favourite ones come back with insults, telling you that your website is worthless and you are an awful person for not working with them because their family’s pet dog needs surgery and never mind what you want to be paid, you simply MUST go with their lowball offer. I don’t know if it’s a poor attempt at negging or what, but I can’t say it’s ever worked on me.

I had one such guy in my inbox this week.

Let’s call him ‘Simon‘.

It all started out very average and very boring.

So far, so normal.

I responded my stock ‘Thanks for emailing me, I charge this much blah blah‘ response, he replied, we too-ed and fro-ed and did the silly dance but ultimately his budget wasn’t worth considering and I said no thanks, and not to worry.

That could have been the end of it, but no. He felt he needed to tell me that he was ‘thoroughly disappointed’, which was sad.

I do hate to disappoint total strangers.

OK, I guess my response was fairly unprofessional. I even used ‘LOL’ although I meant it satirically I assure you. However the first draft said ‘You cold emailed me, you absolute walloper. Go shove it up your rusty hoop’ so you know, could have been worse.

Being the immature, unprofessional blogger that I am, obviously I found this whole exchange rather funny so I shared it on Facebook.

And Twitter, actually.

And then I received this email.

It’s very possible that until that point he hadn’t realised that I was an actual old-school blogger who writes my own stuff and has a Facebook page and all that shiz. Evidence points to no. Whoops.

I’m not sure whether [the specific social media platform] will care much about us laughing at Simon throwing a strop about someone saying ‘no’, but given they don’t care about degenerates getting their cocks out and people being blatant Nazis, I don’t fancy his chances to be fair.

So I told him to piss off.

To which he responded with some thinly veiled, fairly amusing threats.

Oh maaaaaate.

I then realised I’d made nearly five whole American dollars from the post’s engagement on Facebook – almost equivalent to what he wanted to pay me in the first place – and so I decided not to take it down.

My bad. Sorry Simon. Mea Culpa.

He’s still ranting on about something in my spam emails I believe. I guess next time he might take no as a whole sentence.

And some more mildly amusing inbox action

I also get people offering to fix the many errors on my site and offer their SEO services because ‘I’m not ranking on Google’ (although they managed to find me somehow, so I’m calling bullshit on that). These spam emails probably account for another 10 – 20 emails a day, and I completely ignore these; they go straight in the bin.

This one was special though because for the LIFE of me I can’t understand how this subject line is supposed to work.

Is it a pun? What does Star Wars have to do with anything?

Oh, and I’m not actually called Emma either, not sure if you’ve noticed. Offence has definitely been taken, Fahim.

And finally:

I know, I know. It’s awful of me to have raised my prices since 2020 when you last contacted me and presumably immediately fell into a three-and-a-half year long coma.

And yet, I still don’t want your dodgy bitcoin posts. Life is just one long disappointment isn’t it.

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