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Blogs for sale!

Would you buy a used blog from this man?
I quite often get request to put advertising links on my blog or websites, and as long as they are to a reasonable website, I don't see the problem. However, I got an email a few days ago that absolutely floored me. The subject was straightforward and to the point:

I want to buy your blog

'I'm sorry,' I thought, 'what?' It must be some advertising person's idea of a catchy subject line. So I read on. It told me that the author of the email was interested in buying my blog. What price would I put on it? What price indeed?

Intrigued, I emailed back. 'I'm not sure what you mean by "buy my blog",' I said. 'Could you elaborate?'

In theory there were two things he could mean. He might want to buy the URL - I could just about imagine that some other Brian Clegg (or company of that name) really wanted the brianclegg.blogspot blog. Or he could mean the whole thing, content and all. But surely not - that would be ridiculous.

Back he came. He wanted to buy the entire blog with all the content. What was my asking price?

Whoa! This was bizarre. Out of interest I tried to find out how I could protect my reputation and what he would be prepared to pay, but all he had to say was they were buying blogs to increase search engine presence for their clients, so were looking for blogs with correct English and grammar. Aw, shucks. But I had to come up with a price.

Half of me wanted to say £10,000 and see how he reacted, but the other half stopped me, because what if he had said 'Yes'? I wouldn't object to the cash, but just think about it. I would be handing over my entire blog to someone else. Okay, they could add some marketing links, but also they could change the content. Without anyone realizing this was no longer Brian Clegg's blog, this could become a site for extremism, hate or just good old libel. It's more than a bit scary, when you think about it. How many bloggers have they approached? Did any say yes? Is your favourite blog still written by the person you think it is?

Now, while I've got your attention, who would like to buy some excellent stuff?
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Comments

  1. Alice Turing8 February 2011 at 21:05

    Hmm. Could this be some kind of scam, along the lines of "you have inherited a million pounds" or "please look after my millions of pounds for me because my government won't let me have it"? I would be wary. Sounds extremely dodgy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian Clegg8 February 2011 at 21:38

    Don't worry, the whole concept is much too risky!

    ReplyDelete

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