Dear Proprietor of F__________,
We have followed your site, F__________ for a while now. We have read your posts and they seem entertaining and well conceived. We think you’ll be a good addition to our staff here at __________.
We can’t pay, but you’ll get your own byline with a bio attached to your website/twitter/Facebook page. The site averages _ million visitors a month, but we’re growing very fast.
Thank You,
_____
@__________
@__________
@__________
WHAT THE EMAIL REALLY MEANS:
Dear Spencer,
Someone that’s a big deal (to us) linked to one of your posts. We noticed your site after clicking on the random link. We don’t really understand what a Tumblr is, but you seem to get good traffic based of your sitemeter (with no way knowing whether this is an accurate assessment of your site’s traffic [ed.It’s not]). It also seems like you write every day for it, but there are no ads? This means you’re naive about the business side of the Internet, so we can take advantage of you.
How would you like to work for free creating content for our site, which only _ million people read every month (you’ll just have to take my word for that since there is no transparent way to prove this to you). You seem to have the usual snarky editorial tone to your site, but directed towards the ___, which is excellent (we think because that is what other successful blogs do too!). Only about 14 people care about the ___, but that could change! Especially during this l______ that has no end in site.
To be honest, we haven’t actually read any of your posts, but we suspect it includes lots of cool photographs (possibly a slideshow or two!), and its editorial content is similar to that of about 100 other ___-centric sites. We’ve already reached out to ___-O________ and G__’__ ____, but they don’t respond to us. Besides, they’re actually quality websites with a clear direction or a group of bloggers contributing. Your blogging/writing seems preoccupied (i.e. poorly edited), but you write at so many other places (often for free), so why not one more?! [ed. the editors of those other sites are talented enough I’ll write for free as long as I get to work with them.]
We figure you’re probably in college because who can afford to blog for free every day except a college student?! As a college student, you possess a limited number of “life” experiences, so we figured a quick email would get you really excited. You’d get some great exposure on the world wide web. Some day, maybe, you’ll even make money writing about the ___. But not for us. Like we said, you’re working for free and the exposure. But, make sure to tweet, facebook post, and digg our posts, so you benefit our site even though we will not be paying you.
We’ve got our fingers crossed that if we let you create original content for us, with nothing but the (hardly quantifiable) exposure to your writing, we’re getting a huge ROI—off your work! If you’re new to this whole Internet thing, you’ll get suckered into this, and believe it will actually benefit you.
We’re just hoping you can do what you’ve been doing for free already; you’ll just be doing it for us!
Thanks (but not really),
_____
@TheSiteWeWantYouToWriteForFreeFor
@AnotherSiteWeEditThatSucks
@AThirdSiteWithAnInnoucuousName
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