Will work for attention

I just got the following email:

Hi Noam,

I just came across your blog, Algorithmic Game Theory and found it to be pretty insightful. I’m trying to get some freelance practice, and was wondering if you would be willing to consider a guest piece from me. I could write on something specific for you, or something that would fit in with your blog. Let me know if you are willing and if there is a process or anything. If you choose to accept my article, I would only ask for a single link back to my site, http://www.onlinedegreeshub.com/. I have included 2 of my previous published posts:

http://www.onlinedegreeshub.com/blog/2009/12-celebs-who-give-geeks-hope-for-fame-and-fortune/

http://www.onlinedegreeshub.com/blog/2009/100-ivy-league-computer-science-courses-you-can-take-for-free-online/

Please get back with me if you would like me to send something over for your consideration.

Thanks for your time,
Tara Miller

I have to admit that I was intrigued by this unusual mode of marketing: the sole desired reward is attention — a link to the website. Of course, the spam filter on this blog routinely removes many automatically-generated comments that attempt “stealing attention”, but this offer does not seem to be neither spam nor automatically generated and the offer for the “guest post” seems personalized enough so that real work was offered. What is being promoted seems to be a rather new web site and blog that intend to be a portal for online education/degrees — probably not useful for most of the audience of this blog — but still seems to contain some useful links to online material. I was impressed enough with the basic premise of this offer (as well as somewhat flattered by the suggestion that the attention that my blog can bring is worth something) that my response was to use the letter, with the links, directly as a blog post. So, Tara, if you’re actually reading this, a comment on your experience with this marketing effort would be appreciated.