Complete Story
03/24/2015
Going behind the curtain on 'sponsored content'
Over the past few weeks I've received emails like the one below almost every day.
Hi there,
I am just contacting you to see if you would be interested in hosting some third party content on your website, theatlantic.com?
I am currently working with a sports betting website to find websites to submit unique articles to which link back to our client's website.
We would make the article look natural by choosing a topic which is relevant to your website.
The article would need to remain live for a minimum of 12 months, be free of any tags such as guest or sponsored as well as containing no nofollow links.
If this is something that you would be interested in, please email me back so we can discuss the details further such as reimbursement.
Kind regards
The letters vary enough in length, phrasing, introductory greeting, and detailed proposals to suggest they're not all coming from the same boilerplate source. But they're similar enough in their overall pitch—we'll pay you to publish "sponsored content" as long as you conceal the fact that it's sponsored—to suggest, as with the endless flood of "I am the former Finance Minister of Gabon with $35 million for you" scam notes, that someone has figured out a potentially lucrative opportunity. Based on IP addresses, currency details, and so on, most of the senders seem to be based in Europe or Australia, but who knows where they're really from.
