Published Jun 11. 2018 - 5 years ago
Updated or edited Oct 8. 2020

Three strikes...

No, not strikes from fish, but strikes from spammers and wannabe guest posters who try to get their spam published on GFF. Three strikes and they get this.

I constantly get mails like this:
“Are you still accepting guest posts?” (Nope, never did!)
“Are you currently accepting guest posts?” (Nope, do your homework)
“I see that you are accepting guest posts” (Nope, quite the opposite, actually)
“I read your guidelines and want to contribute a sponsored post” (Nope, you obviously didn't)
"...since I saw that you offer sponsored posts on globalflyfisher.com" (No, you didn't. It says the exact opposite)

Guest posts

These mails are from hopeful people who want to tap into the visitor flow on GFF and want to place paid articles on the site's pages. I have complained about them before.
None of them hide the fact that it's plain commercial content, and that links back to shops and web sites is a part of the deal. Most write things like "We're also happy to pay for this as we know links are rarely free and this takes up your time." or "Can you let me know how to proceed and your charges?"

The pattern is the same.
I get a mail.
I ignore it.
I get another mail quoting the first one, wondering why I don't react.
I ignore it.
I get a third mail containing the full wording of the first two ones, really insisting on me returning to the mailer.
I ignore it.
I rarely get a fourth mail, but it does happen.
I ignore it...

I get a mail.
I ignore it.

Three strikes

A few moths ago I decided to start replying to the third mail. I purposely made the reply mail long and for a major part positive, but still made sure that the final message was: buzz off!
This is what I write to "third time offenders":

Dear so-and-so,

I'm so glad that you have contacted me and the http://globalfyfisher.com editorial and marketing staff and I appreciate your effort, returning to me several times. I see that as a good sign of enthusiasm and perseverance.

We at http://globalfyfisher.com are very excited that you selected us specifically for your interesting project. We see a lot of potential in meaningful and extended cooperation with skilled, specialized, qualified, outside content providers and authors.

Let me tell you a bit about our site:
http://globalfyfisher.com is a web site for fly fishers and fly tyers - and to some extend for outdoors people in general. The site has a very long history, dating back to the beginning of the Internet era in 1994, and our oldest articles are from that period.

http://globalfyfisher.com is run by me: Martin Joergensen, a Danish fly angler, aided by a large group of outside contributors.

http://globalfyfisher.com is a non-commercial web site, which has no ads or sponsors and no sources of income, but is run as a work of love at our own expenses. We all have full time jobs, and both my own material and that from outside contributors is done as unpaid work.

http://globalfyfisher.com serves internationally favored fly fishing related content to the whole world. The site contains more than 2,000 articles and more than 30,000 pictures. Our contributors come from all over the globe - pros and amateurs, seasoned writers and beginners.

http://globalfyfisher.com features all things fly fishing and fly tying related, like pattern recipes, gear advice, book and video reviews, videos and much more.

http://globalfyfisher.com is a high traffic web site with up to 6,000 unique visitors a day and more than 100,000 visits a month. We serve up to one and a half a million pages a month depending on season.

I hope I got your attention.
Here's a bit about the guest post policy for http://globalfyfisher.com

What is known in marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as "guest posts" is 90% irrelevant articles on subjects only remotely interesting to our readers - and they are also vessels for more or less elegantly disguised ads or endorsements or other marketing mechanisms. The worst ones are pure opportunistic click bait and SEO aides. The better ones are simply sponsored content or articles with links to online stores, mainly put there to accelerate sales rather than bringing information to the reader. We don't want to support either.
Some guest posters will even offer us to pay for bringing the article, AKA sponsored posts. That won't help much here. Junk posts are still junk posts, and the payment is lousy anyway.

So if you are a professional or semi-professional guest poster and think the large http://globalfyfisher.com audience is "gefundenes fressen" for you, just forget it. We're not publishing traditional guest posts.

These are the indicators I use to spot that your mail is about guest posts that I don't want:

- Your suggested articles are totally off subject, like "The best reel for ocean fishing", "The best outboard motor", "Fighting mosquitoes outdoors", "Ice fishing 101" or even "How to select the best ATB tyres" or "Top 10 WiFi routers". No thanks, we deal in fly fishing and fly tying only.

- Your topic choice is way too basic, like "How to select a fishing pole", "Fishing in the rain", "The best beginner's kayak". The audience here is pretty picky and quite knowledgeable, so we need high level articles on specialized subjects.

- Your articles appear to be reviews, but are basically just lists of products and specifications, made at a desk using cut-and-paste, and not real reviews done in the field and written from scratch without bias. We want real world comparisons, measurement and ratings based on extended real life use of the products by yourself.

- The main purpose of your contributions is to get links back to your site or even directly to affiliated online shops. We don't do links for the sake of links, but to refer the readers to useful pages.

- Your site is an online shop itself or filled with links to one or several shops, which pay you a kickback for the visitors or sales you deliver. We don't support commercial sites unless the relevant contributor simply happens to have one, but otherwise delivers content, which meets our quality criteria.

- Your mail to me starts "Dear web site owner", "Hello there" or "Hi globalflyfisher.com" and you constantly refer to my website as a "blog" and the articles as "posts". Do your research and convince me that I'm not simply one of hundreds that you sent the same message or had your system spam with identical, automated guest post suggestions.

- You write something along the lines: "Iメve read your blog for some time. You are doing a fantastic job.", "I followed your site (Global FlyFisher) for a long time and I have read lots of articles." or "I came across your site, http://globalflyfisher.com, and absolutely loved it!". Yeah, right! It's pretty obvious from everything else you write that you never read a single line on the site.

- Your mail comes from a GMail or HotMail account and has no further information and no links back to a company web site. Real pros send from a proper company email-address, have proper references, support their arguments with specific numbers, link to their company web site, have a postal address and a phone number.

Just a single of these telltale signs is usually enough to alert me, and if you recognize parts of your mail in more than one of the above examples, don't expect to hear further back from me - at least not in any constructive way.

So, if you are still with me, I guess I have wasted just about as much of your time as you wasted of mine, and I bring you my final reply:
No, we will not publish your guest post.
Now kindly delete me from your mailing lists, and please don't contact me again.

PS: if you had done your job properly and researched the site a bit, you could have saved your effort as you can read here:http://globalflyfisher.com/basic-page/we-dont-publish-guest-postshttp://globalflyfisher.com/blog/a-guest-post-for-your-blog

Kind regards

Martin

No, we will not publish your guest post!

Crazy off subject

Very few – if any of the potential guest posters offer anything relevant. I still haven't seen anything that has anything to do with fly fishing. It's actually almost never about fishing, and only rarely about outdoors life. Most are totally crazy off subject, but still blabber happily along as if we were best mates with common interests.

These are all real suggested subjects:
Lauren: “I’ve been working on a piece about tow truck services, which I know you’ve written about before”
Sarah: “Guide for globalflyfisher.com: Can You Over Clean Your House?”
Ross: “From the Hunting Blind to the Boardroom: Lessons That Hunting Taught Me”
Liura: “How Tequila Reduces Weight & Diabetes”
Lita: “How to Cook Salmon: A Definite Guide For Beginner”
Mark: "We've actually just put together a great resource page on care homes and senior living"

Care homes and senior living? Tow truck service? Cleaning my house?

That'll be the day!

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