Fact: Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most remote city from any sea at about 2,500 km.
I admit that this is a pretty useless fact, but hang with me for a second while I explain. I got an e-mail early last week from someone who claimed to be trying to buy advertising space on farwestchina.com. Besides the fact that these kind of e-mails rarely ever hit my inbox (make that never), I just happen to be reading a book called Stealing Your Life (written by the same guy whose story was depicted in the movie "Catch Me If You Can") which is all about identity theft and scams, so I was a bit skeptical.So this e-mail, which doesn't appear to be mass-mailed, tells me that my farwestchina.com site looks good and he would love to work out an advertisement deal for a link. So far, so good - quite an ego boost, actually. Any excitement that might have been building, however, was immediately squashed when I read what the link was supposed to be for. Remember that useless fact I told you about a second ago?
He wanted me to advertise a cruise website.
A cruise. Oh, the irony. I hope this is a scam, because if not, this "marketing executive" ought to learn that research is a vital aspect of advertising. Gee whiz, it's like trying to sell parkas in Hawaii or fishing poles in the Gobi. Good luck.
I politely replied and asked him if he was sure he knew what he was doing and after week and a half I don't really expect a response. If anybody wants to advertise camel rides or silk road tours, I think I can work with you. Cruises just don't seem to fit my location, sorry.
Disclaimer: Mr. Marketing Executive, if I have erred and you really do want to advertise a cruise on this site, I do apologize. Really. I will make it up to you by throwing in a full blog post completely dedicated to retracting this article. Thank you.
4 Comments:
we had someone selling us advertising the other day from england - he said we could advertise at the football stadium and 2 million people would see the advert. The population of Bahrain is only 750,000 and the stadium seats 10,000 .... I asked him where the other people were coming from??
The irony in this is rather humorous! In the last week I've received offers from a puppy site and a healthy salad site. Both talked about spending lots of time on our website for it's "quality content" :)
Btw, the puppy people found us through this post about striped dogs we saw in Urumqi. Just curious, have you ever seen them and have any idea how they got their stripes?
@wgaw - Ha! I'm glad to know I'm not the only one! You'd think if people wanted to pull off a scam they'd at least try to make it plausible, you know?
@Audrey - Striped dogs? Nope, haven't seen those yet! Crazy pictures! I'll definitely keep my eyes on the lookout next time I'm in Urumqi.
I've gotten some odd offers for my literary journal--mostly dating and useless products.
Figures, I leave in a few days and NOW I can read your blog without a proxy.
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