I get a lot of email. A LOT. Gratefully, the SPAM filter in Microsoft Outlook manages to filter out most of the crap. Once in a while, however, something gets through.
Normally, I just delete the message and get on with my day. This morning, however, I saw an email with the subject: “Professional Copywriting Services for Denny Boynton.”
“Huh,” I grunted. It’s unusual for SPAMmers to personalize their little electronic turds—it’s too much work for those cyberleeches—so I concluded this must be something legitimate from someone who happened across my technical blog. I get these a lot, people who want to link exchange, advertise, etc.
So, seeing as it contained no reference to cheap Viagra, penis enlargement apparatus, or deposed African princes who need my checking account to park twenty million dollars in temporarily, I opened the email. Let me share it with you in its entirety:
Howdy Denny,
hope you’re keeping well – I’m just getting in touch to ask if you’re in need of any freelance writing at Denny Boynton – if so, it’d be an honor to help out and I would love to get involved if you have any need for me.
I’m 29 have been working full-time as a professional writer and researcher for five years now; in that time there isn’t a lot I haven’t already covered (there are a few samples below for you to check out). Anything I send over would be written with the site’s readership in mind – as long as you’re happy with the resulting material, you’d be welcome to publish it as you see fit and the content will be owned by you entirely (in that I won’t send it to anyone else, either before or after publication).
The good news is that I’d be able to offer my services at no charge; the only thing I would ask in return is that I’m able to include a link to a site within the article – nothing shady or unethical, just one of the professional businesses I freelance on behalf of. Otherwise I’d be happy to chat about alternative arrangements.
Do let me know if you’re interested, and if so I can get something written for you over the course of the next few days. Needless to say, the offer is open to any other sites you might own as well as dennyboynton.com. I appreciate that this kind of offer is not for everyone however, so if I don’t hear from you, no offense taken and I won’t trouble you again.
Very best,
ImogenSome samples for your delectation:
http://www.blackpresence.co.uk/2012/01/remembering-a-legend-gil-scott-heron/
http://www.shaanhaider.com/2012/01/urine-controlled-video-games.html
http://britmovietours.com/movie-tv-news/doctor-who-%E2%80%93-where-are-the-lost-episodes/
http://www.cs36.com/the-four-horsemen-of-online-marketing-in-2012/
http://www.tmeink.com/2012/02/my-name-is-might-have-been-my-name-is.html
Wow.
Just…wow.
The email was sent from Imogen Reed (imogen@linegray.com). I did a quick WHOIS look-up and low and behold, the domain linegray.com appears to be a legitimate domain for a business in the United Kingdom.
By all accounts, this is someone seriously offering me professional copywriting services.
I don’t know about you, but I start all my business correspondence by giving the recipient a big old Howdy! Yes sir, nothing connotes professionalism like using cowboy vernacular. Also, that’s some super interesting capitalization in the first sentence. The first sentence. I also especially like the clever use of hyphens as a replacement for periods. Very stylistic.
The second paragraph reinforces something that I’ve said for many, many years: “Dude, leave semicolons to the professionals.” And need I even comment on the sentence, “I’m 29 have been working full-time as a professional writer and researcher for five years now?” Hey sport, I have a suggestion for you: Why don’t you go research how to proofread.
Could I really trust a writer who informs me that the link he/she would like me to include on my site belongs to “professional businesses I freelance on behalf of” as opposed to “professional businesses for which I freelance?”
And the samples for my “delectation?” Oh yes, nothing delights me more than reading a sloppily written post about urine controlled video games. That’s some good shit right there, let me tell you (pun definitely intended).
All of this, of course, is free of charge.
If this is SPAM, then I’m sorry for giving the bloodsuckers this much attention.
If Imogen Reed is a real person soliciting work as a writer, then I have a piece of sage advice for him/her: Learn to write before asking someone to hire you as a writer, you putz. And while you’re at it, get back to your fryer. The chicken nuggets are burning.
Slidebar 
Ha! Wow. The nerve.
Oh, by the way – I am offering my services as a proofreader. However, I want to be paid.
Just got a extremely similar email from Imogen today myself!
I found this blog because I too googled her after my company received a similar email. It had the “I’m 29 have been working full-time as…”, so it’s not just gibberish – it’s *boilerplate* gibberish. However, there was no “delectation” and just a generic “Howdy there”, so she must actually re-write and therefore re-read these things! In case anyone’s wondering, none of the odd-sounding stuff is obscure U.K. usages – it’s just odd, and she also has her spellchecker set to ‘US English’ regardless of the recipient. Brightened up our day.
I got the same email.
Imogen would be busy as hell if we put him/her to work.
Carry on now my good man, pip pip and all that. I thought I got a “howdy” cos I’m actually in Texas. 🙂
Well DaddyClaxton, it’s not appropriate for Imogen to say it, but it’s fine for me.
“Howdy!”
Lol! I do love irony. 🙂 I’ve nominated you for the versatile blogger award. See the full nomination here: http://johnmullinax.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/thanks-mdphotographers-for-the-versitale-blogger-award-nomination/
Hey thanks, John!
I have just got the same email, for some reason she thinks I work for the McGann family. She s offering this service to the family of a missing child.
What’s going on ?
I got the same email, and (presumably like everyone else) ended up here by googling “Imogen Reed” and “spam.” I love the way the internet always has an answer for me. 🙂
Yeah, we got one too…glad I checked! Delectation was indeed weird…
Hi,
Yes, I’ve received the same letter from the same e-mail address (with the same name) and the same “delectation” (whatever that means, English is not native to me). Initially the “shady marketer” nerve triggered, but on second thought, having guest bloggers would be nice.
So I replied to her (?) and said to start on my personal blog instead and we’ll see how it goes. My thought was, if I give only a “contributor” access to my blog, any damage done can be easily reversed (am I right?).
Well anyway, if anybody else would like to guest-post on my blog, just ask (on the blog or on Twitter below). I’ll need some kind of social proof that you’re who you say you are and your posts will be PG-13 the worst ^_^
Thanks.
got the same exact email today…so Sasmito…is she writing for you?
I got the same email and I did the same thing everyone else did. I googled the name. I told this person to write up something for a test and they did. She took quotes from a Huffington Post article and didn’t attribute it to the publication. I don’t this person interviewed John Cusack.
Oh great, so another achievement Imogen can claim is “I plagiarize REAL GOOD.” 🙂
I replied to her to saying she/he didn’t attribute John Cusack’s quotes. There reply was that the quotes were attributed to Cusack. They haven’t responded to my email about where they got the quotes. I didn’t mention I found them in a Huffington Post article.
Well, Imogen clearly took your advice. The email I got read “just one of the professional businesses for which I freelance.” I don’t have a problem with the stranded preposition she gave you, but seriously, what the hell is going on with this? It’s too legit to be spam and too spam to be legit. I’m confused.
Wait a minute, you’re saying he/she took my copywriting advise for free? Look at me, not even an address to send a bill. 🙂
You nailed it, Joe. It was that “this smells like SPAM and yet…” feeling I got that inpsired the post in the first place. Then you report that grammar in the email is changing. Very weird.
Got the same email today. I’ve seen the approach before and actually think it’s semi decent. He/she is pretty clear on the offering. If you want an article written for free she wants a link in return (obviosly for SEO). Seems to actually be offering something which may be of interest to some people.
I wouldn’t slate someone to hard for trying to make a living and IMO I wouldn’t categorise this as spam.
Well AC, I only have two points to make on your comment.
First, go read dudley228’s comment above. It appears, when asked to submit a writing sample, Imogen goes out and plagiarizes other people’s work. That’s hardly the sign of a professional writer or an ethical person. I will always “slate” someone for stealing other people’s writing and claiming it as their own.
Second, the primary point of my post was to show the irony of someone offering professional writing services via an email that looks like it was written by a sixth grader.
yes got it too!
I just got this email too! And my website is predominantly about ballet so I thought it seemed odd that anyone would want to ‘offer their writing services’ to me in a subject most don’t really put down in words. Thanks for posting this, it made my google search to determine ‘spam or not spam’ pretty quick and painless. http://jessruhlin.wordpress.com
Just received the same email minutes ago…
Update: I got another email from Imogen. That’s two in as many days! I feel special…
But this one’s subject is “Writing Contest for [my website].” Was this a challenge? A threat?
No, the email body was exactly the same. What a let down.
I got this today too, and I’m and ARTIST blogger…I dont worry about them words too much, so I dont know what he/she was thinking to write for me…
Many thanks for this. I just got one. Someone called ‘Jesus’ also keeps sending me enigmatic comments with sneaky links to Glasgow property sites so I was suspicious straight away!
Hi guys,
It’s Imogen here. Hopefully I can clear up the bewilderment I seem to have unwittingly caused (I only just became aware of this thread after a fellow writer tipped me off).
To be honest, I’m not sure why there is such confusion in the first place. I am a real person, and a return email would have confirmed that. I strive to be transparent and honest in what I’m doing, hence stating my intentions and using my real name from the off whenever I contact a site owner. In addition, I only contact around thirty people a week (any more and I’d never cope with the responses in amongst keeping up established relationships) and I make sure I do my research fully before hitting send.
Sure, my opening email is template to a degree, purely because a) It saves me a bit of time I can otherwise spend writing, and b) it clearly lays out what I offer and what I get in return. Occasionally I’ll tweak it based on response… and yes, Slidebar, I have to hold my hands up and say you got me on some fairly embarrassing errors typed in haste. You do have my gratitude for pointing those out!
As a sole bread-winner and parent, I actually take my work very seriously (otherwise I’d never have taken Slidebar’s criticisms on board) and use guest posting as a way of making ends meet in between larger copywriting jobs. As such, I’m incredibly hurt by utterly baseless accusations of ‘scamming’ anyone.
But the thing that hurts me the most here is the accusation of plagiarism (also meritless). Dudley228: You and I both know how that conversation actually went down, and it certainly wasn’t the version of events you presented here. That article took me two hours to write, but I didn’t realise you were just wasting my time for your own amusement. In hindsight it seems you were looking for me to fail and send something written by an Indian or totally ripped from elsewhere, but then all you could fault was an overlooked url reference. It was a single, one line quote from Cusack. You pointed out there wasn’t a source to it, and I replied very quickly with that source (which was probably the Huffington Post one). I never claimed to have interviewed Cusack. I’m not that lucky.
Thanks for your time if you managed to make it through this essay. I’d imagine very few comments follow this since I’ve not guest posted much in the last week and this thread has been dead for a while, but wanted to get the chance to clear up some stuff. I’d like to make it clear that I WILL NOT be responding to any questions or follow ups here – in fact, I will NOT be coming back here to even check if there are follow ups. I find the whole thing deeply upsetting and I’m actually shaking a little as I write this.
I’m woman enough to admit when I make a blunder in my writing and can take criticism fine, but what I cannot deal with are people blindly attack my character and make false assumptions.
I wish the very best to you all.
Oh spare us the theatrics! You’ve just sent my friend one of those emails. YOU ARE NUISANCE!!!
To the author of this blog and all the commenters:
I got roughly the same recruitment email from Imogen Reed as most who have posted here did. I wondered who this was, was it/she legit and what did I have to give up to let her post on my site. I have very high standards for my site and so am careful about who I allow to write for it. In fact this was to be only the third time I allowed a guest post in the 5 years my blog has been active.
But unlike the people who created this blog and some that commented on this post about Imogen Reed, I did not assume the worst and go have half-cocked writing really hurtful things about someone who I now know is completely legit and really hurt by the painful things being said here about her. I do not fully understand the psychology of the Internet yet even though I am one of those PhD’s in computer science who got to use it very early starting in 1978. The things some of you have written are things you would never dare say to someone sitting next to you at a party. And if those things were written about your sister you would go find the person writing them and have serious words with them.
So maybe many of you should take a chill pill. Imogen wrote a very nice piece for my site. She did her homework and wrote something additive and insightful about a topic that was new to her. Yes, the price I paid for that was a link to a site that pays her to get more links to their site. I made sure that site was not embarrassing or detrimental to my site. It is a small fee to pay to get some good relevant additional content for my site. No one has to agree to do that and she would go away. There was no reason and no excuse for the kind of trash I (and she) read about her. I would suggest that some of you might feel the need to apologize to Imogen whom I have continued to have a lot of interactions with.
Her email is: Imogen Reed
Jothy,
Thanks for your comment. However, with all due respect, I have nothing to apologize for. While some folks who have commented on this post have been harsh, my original post focused on the irony of an unsolicited email offering “professional writing services” that is written at a second grade level. If “Imogen” is, in fact, a living, breathing human being, I have two pieces of advice for furthering his/her career:
1) Never, under any circumstances, send an introductory letter as poorly constructed and written as the one that prompted this post in the first place. It’s bad form no matter what you’re trying to communicate, but professional death if you’re offering to write things for other people. Based on that initial communication, I wouldn’t have hired Imogen to sign my kid’s birthday card.
2) Find some other way to promote your service. By definition, SPAM is an unsolicited email and will be treated as such by the majority of people who receive it, i.e. it goes straight into the recycle bin. It cheapens the image you’re trying to put across and puts you in the same category as charlatans trying to sell Canadian Viagra.
I received the offer today for my military-oriented site. This one was just for “professional freelance writing,” which I politely declined.
I received an Imogen email yesterday and wrote it off as better-than-average spam. The links to the writing samples provided all appeared to be authored by different people. Even if legit, this is no way for a writer to solicit work.
I blog as well and I’m authoring something very similar to this posting, “The Most Enigmatic Unsolicited
Email Ever Slidebar”. Do you mind in case I actuallyutilise a lot of of your concepts?
Thank you -Miriam
Certainly. Of course, trackbacks are always appreciated. 🙂
Hi,
Just like anyone to know if there is anyone still reading these posts (probably a bit dated now). Imogen also approached me too and I thought spam also at first. It appears Imogen is a real person and she did some posts for me and I was highly surprised she knew about the content that was on my website. I was impressed with the content and yeah you get a few links added to it but outbound links as well as inbound links can help your website in Google’s eyes.
I think if anyone who gets an email from her should try out her skills, she really does add content to a blog and especially if like me, you have been too busy to add content to your blog, it helps. She seems like a truthful individual and the internet is all about social, sharing and all that other tree hugging stuff. So, I say good luck to her.