The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

These have to be legit offers for writers

I received the following two emails just minutes apart, although one was sent much earlier than the other. The first one I received (names have been changed; capitalization has not):

From
Ken Lee <XXXXX­XXXXX­Xofficial32@gmail.com>
To
Sean <sean@conman.org>
Subject
Guest post proposal
Date
Tue, 18 Oct 2022 01:20:19 -0400

Hi,

My name is Ken lee. I was wondering: do you accept guest posts on http://www.conman.org/? I’ve been brainstorming some topics that I think your readers would get a ton of value from my post. I am already writing regularly for techstuff.example.net.

If you are interested please revert back to this mail.

All the best

And the second one (again, names have been changed, capitalization has not):

From
Nosmo king <XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXofficial@gmail.com>
To
Sean <sean@conman.org>
Subject
 
Date
Mon, 17 Oct 2022 22:31:09 -0700

Hi,

My name is Nosmo King. I was wondering: do you accept guest posts on ? I’ve been brainstorming some topics that I think your readers would get a ton of value from my post. I am already writing regularly for techstuff.example.net.

If you are interested please revert back to this mail.

All the best

Nice to know their email address are their “official” email addresses.

And Yes, the second one to arrive before the first one was sent—it just took its time getting to me. It also seems the first sender had … um … issues with sending the email as the subject line is missing, and no mention of my website. I did check techstuff.example.net and found Ken Lee (not his real name) has written articles there. And the photo attached to Ken Lee appears to be him. I did not find any writer named Nosmo King (again not his real name) on the site. Perhaps he's a new writer there? I just found it amusing that two “different” writers, writing for the same site, decided to send me the same email shilling their work.

I'm also wondering if they expect me to pay for these articles, or are they doing it just for the exposure?

I'm thinking they're expecting to get paid.

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