Apathy Sketchpad

According to Blog Her, Barbara Couley is Not Real. But she is real. I know she’s real because she sent me this email:

from: Barbara Couley <barbaracouley@gmail.com>
to: taylor.andrew@gmail.com,
date: Jan 8, 2008 8:07 AM
subject: Follow Up Email For Paid Text Link Advertisement!
Hi,

I sent you an email few days back, I am interested in purchasing text link advertising on your website http://www.apathysketchpad.com/. Let me know if interested and we can discuss further details as well. I can make a good offer to make it worth your time.

Let me know!
Thanks
Barbara

I told her I was interested, which was bad of me, but I’d do it again. She sent me more details. The formatting’s gone a bit since I pasted it, but it was fairly bad to begin with.

Hello!

Thank you for your reply and interest. I am interested in purchasing permanent placement of text-links on specific pages of your website. 

• I would be paying one time fee and paragraph will stay lifetime.
• Per page there will be a placement of  5-7 text-links.
• The text link advertisement itself won’t be more than 125 words
• Contents will be customized and well matched with the theme of your site.
• The content will be unique and won’t be spammy.
• You will have the right to get anything edited through us which you disapprove of.
• The links will be between the post and the comments section.
• It should not get archived in any way or move off the page.

Here is an example to better understand what I am looking to place on your web site.

Red colored links below the Google adds.

http://www.shwetz-online.in/blog/2005/11/29/nav-2006-review/

Blue colored links below the iPhone toolkit add

http://www.dotalex.com/?p=10

 specific pages with price are given below:

 $20 each page

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/02/col-daria/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/09/col-sbsp/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/02/col-happy16/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/28/col-contradictionary/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/21/col-adamscar/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/22/col-daveanddick/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/28/col-deadlines2/  

 

Looking forward to your reply.

Kind Regards,

Barbara

Gosh, that would be $140 altogether, just for advertising on pages nobody ever looks at, which given the current exchange rates is approximately one pittance. I asked her for “a sample of the content that would appear on [my] site”.

I shall have  the content for your web pages written, once you agree to make the deal. otherwise, it will waste the payment i shall make to my writer.

If you want to be sure about how these paragraphs will look like with the text links in them , you can review that in the examples i sent to you in my last mail.

regards,

Barbara

Well I wasn’t about to agree to anything without seeing what it is. That would be silly of me.

I had a look at the text on the example webpages you linked me to, and you’re right, it does fit fairly nicely with the sites, but I’m puzzled as to why you need a writer to come up with it for you. It’s not as if it’s going to get into the Richard and Judy Book club, is it?

If you don’t want to employ a writer, send me the links you want and I’ll have a go at writing something — then it will fit perfectly with my site.

Andrew

I am nothing if not generous. Except perhaps cynical, mean, bored, fairly tall, tired…

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for getting in touch.

If you would like to write the paragraphs on your own( for no additional fee) , I am fine with that. I shall send you the keywords to be embedded in the paras as anchor text.

Also, if my writer writes the paras, even then you will have the right to edit the content (except the anchor text) as per your prefernce.

Please let me know what you think of this.

Thnaks,

Barbara

No additional fee? What a bitch — I just saved her “a payment to [her] writer”! Nevertheless, I agreed, and she asked for my Pay Pal ID. Fortunately, I have kept it up to date by responding to every single email that said “you mush enter your password at lycos.nl/freeuserpages/notaconmanhostly/scams/paypal/fairlyconvincing.htm to prevent account closure!”. I told her I’d rather get all the details sorted before we started exchanging money, so she sent me this:

Hi Andrew,

I attached an excel file with

• the URLs I want the paragraph on (column A),

• keywords (column C),

• URLS respective to keywords(column B) and 

• written  paragraphs(coumn D).

Now, you are free to either place the paragraphs(coumn D) or to write the paragraphs yourself (by using the URLS in column B and keywords in column C)

Please let me know when you finish with this so that I can review them and make the payment to your PayPal account for this permanent deal.

 

Thank you very much,

 

Barbara

The file attached was this. Have a look. It’s good writing, that! But I thought I could match it…

Here’s what I thought of for some of the pages. I think this would be in-keeping with the theme of my site:

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/28/col-deadlines2/

Many people in this century use numbers for counting with. Counting things that you have less than none of is stupid, but mathematicians have invented Negative Numbers for it. You can get such numbers by subtracting large positive (or “proper”) numbers from smaller numbers. For example, 70-290 = -350, 70-298 = -358, 70-620 = -690, 70-536 = -606, 74-134 = -208. You cannot just make shit up, though. For example, MB2-423 is not a sum.

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/09/col-sbsp/

Monopoly is a game where you buy hotels. Depending on which version of the game you own, these may be new york hotels or london hotels . It is usually considered cheating to negotiate discounts on hotels with the banker. No version of the game includes cruise port hotels.

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/22/col-daveanddick/

If american airline was a sport, it would almost certainly be played in some kind of american airlines arena. Getting in would require american airline tickets, but if you couldn’t afford that you might have to make do with a cheap airline ticket. A favourite snack at these events might be aeroplanes with ham and pineapple on top, which would be called hawaiian airlines .

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/02/col-daria/

Tom cruises chosen religion is one of those silly cult ones. his younger brother, nile cruise, is no better. The carnival cruise reviews in his latest book is rubbish, but Cruise gives it high praise, probably because he met a nice girl there, by using some of his best cruise lines. Playing poker with him is a nightmare because he pauses for ages and then at the last minute cruise deals .

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/02/col-happy16/

Most buildings have flights of stairs in them. Offices have commercial ones; homes have domestic flights. New technology is producing larger and larger staircases, and scientists predict that soon we will be able to build flights to boston. If you want cheap flights students are good people to talk to because they work for less than fully qualified stairsmiths. At the top of one flight airline tickets can be found. You need these to watch the sport.

Would these be okay? I shall do the others later. Can I ask why you’re buying links to http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-travel-phys/, by the way? It would seem sensible to wait until the technology is more viable.

Andrew

I think I got the gist across.

Hi Andrew,

Yes , everything looks fine so far as you chose.

I am an independent webmaster and choose the pages/sites/links after my heart .You are right, but I just happen to pick and choose as I come across anything that interests me :)

Looking forward to establishing a happy business relationship with you,

 

Best Regards,

Barbara

I was by this stage more than a little confused. I can only assume Couley (which is clearly not her real name) is trying to get PayPal IDs, though I don’t know what she can do with them.

Gosh, that’s very altruistic of you, isn’t it? Paying strangers to promote random websites just because you like them.

But have you ever considered registering at http://del.icio.us ? It would be far cheaper in the long run.

Andrew

That was over a week ago. I think I lost her. Probably she registered a del.icio.us account after all.

I wonder if she’ll want to advertise on this page…