I get thousands of spam e-mails on this site. I could tell you who they came from, but that might generate link traffic to them, and frankly I don’t wish to encourage them. Here’s a sampling of the stuff they’ve been asking lately.
What would you recommend putting in a letter to my kids at Christmas? I promise I wouldn’t say anything you told me not to.
Depends. Is the letter coming from “Santa Claus”? If so, I would give your kids five or six specific suggestions about why they’re on the naughty list this year, and some ways they could improve. Letting your kids use your e-mail address for spam on my blog definitely counts as naughty…
If it’s coming from you, you might explain to the kids that spending all of their money on crazy, alleged coupon deals on the Internet is actually a marketing scam.
Could you please put an RSS feed onto your blog website? I’d really like to get an e-mail from you whenever you have a new column. That would be awesome.
RSS, for those what don’t know, stands for Really Simple Syndication. In most browsers now, if you go up to the URL bar, and look at the right-hand end of the bar, you’ll see the RSS feed button. You can bookmark the link you get when you click on that button, and you’ll be alerted any time a new column appears here.
One of the nice things about WordPress is that RSS feeds are included automatically, and I don’t have to send you my e-mail address to spam-attack or phish.
Hey, I see you visited my website! I figured I’d “return the favor” and look over your stuff. Looks pretty good. Can I steal some of your ideas?
I’ve never visited your website, because I don’t recall ever being interested in buying a solar-powered donkey-punching spam server in the Australian outback. If building a Palace of Memory helps you sell more such widgets, I suppose you can use some of my ideas. You just can’t use my words in my word-order. That’s plagiarism, and it carries a failing grade in my class.
Who do you pay to do your blog? It is so nicely written, and so nicely designed!
My website uses default designs from the default theme gallery for WordPress. I write or photograph all my own content, except for the occasional Guest Post, like the one Stephen Downes did for me (Thank you Stephen!). I reiterate my willingness to have Bryan Jackson guest-blog, or one of his Talons; or one of my own students.
From time to time I get e-mails that initially appear thoughtful and interesting from alleged teachers, asking if they can do a guest blog… but when I say “yes”, and they send me the guest blog post, it’s badly written and is obviously an effort to drive traffic to some for-profit ‘educational’ content.
I don’t pay anyone to write my blog. I see that WordPress has started running ads on my website, and as far as I’ve seen I don’t get any revenue stream from those ads. So the writing here doesn’t pay me, either.
We think you should support our product that helps kids learn division facts because it ties in with your ideas about memory.
No, actually, your program to teach kids about multiplication facts does exactly the opposite of the Palace of Memory materials. The Palace of Memory is about building a permanent repository of information that exists in relationship to itself; your project is about rote memory achieved through raw repetition.
Thanks for this post. It’s the first thing on your blog that I really agreed with. It just gave me this feeling that we’re in sympathy with one another, and that there’s alignment of our business goals, know what I mean?
No, actually, I don’t. Your listed website is a live poker gambling website, and you’re commenting on a story where I built coolers on the spur of the moment for a friend’s wedding. I don’t see how there’s anything to agree or disagree with, or how we’re in the same business at all.
You know when the TSA asks you, “are you are carrying any firearms?” at the airport? Don’t tell them, “Really? What are you looking to buy?”
This isn’t really a question, but OK. I think this is sound advice, and I appreciate that you gave it to me. For what it’s worth, I’ll share your advice with the world that happens to show up at my door….
I’m still not sharing your link-spam, though. Go write your own blog and develop an audience the hard way.
