Shilling

I recently received the following invitation:

Hi my name is [redacted] and I’m a blog spotter. I basically scour popular blogs in an effort to find great writers. I loved your post on Science, Grime and Republicans, nice job!

I’d like to get straight to the point.

Our client wants people like you to sponsor their products and will pay you to do so. They’ve launched an educational product on September 7th that teaches others how to make money on the internet by using Facebook and Social Media.

We want to pay you for recommending that product to your loyal blog readers and we will pay you up to $200 for each person that you refer. If you make just one sale a day you’re looking at making around $6000 per month.

All you need to do is create a few blog posts that recommend this product. You may also use one of our nice banners and place it on your blog.

Rumor would suggest that a fair number of bloggers do strike such bargains (no idea about the proportion). So just in case any of my loyal readers are wondering, I will never take money to recommend a product. If I recommend a product, it's because I like it.