people apparently still do link exchanges

A typical link exchange request showed up in my inbox a little while back.

On Dec 24, 2007, at 6:23 AM, Dev [redacted] wrote:

Hello,

We visited your site http://reddit.com and are interested to swap links with your site.

We would add your link at the home page of http://www.virtualshopfront.net / PR3 which will actually help to increase the search engine rank of your site and give you some targeted traffic too.

We'd appreciate a link back from the home/internal page of your site for the mutual benefit.

If you are interested please reply to this email with your link details.

We look forward for your positive response.

Best regards,
Dev [redacted]

Not one to pass up on a great deal, I naturally responded:

That's be great, Dev! I've been a longtime fan of virtualshopfront.net.

Please notify me when you've got a URL to reddit.com listed on your site.

thanks,
Alexis

Dev was pleased and was looking for me to do my end of the business deal.

On Dec 28, 2007 11:25 AM, Dev [redacted] wrote:
Hi,
Thanks for the information. We have added your link at http://www.virtualshopfront.net/ .
Please add our link at your home page, after completing please inform us about the current status of our link.

Here is our link info:

URL- http://www.affiliate-programs-marketing.com/

Title- Affiliate Programs

Description1- affiliate-programs-marketing.com is going to release a top notch software called Affiliate elite. The software will be released limited in number and first come first served method will be employed. So don't miss the opportunity.

Thanks
Regards
Dev [redacted]

I've got to say, I didn't think he'd taken me seriously, so I was surprised to see him email me again a couple days later.

On Dec 31, 2007, at 2:26 AM, Dev [redacted] wrote:

Hi,
Thanks for the information. We have added your link at http://www.virtualshopfront.net/ veiw it.
Please add our link at your home page.

Here is our link info:

URL- http://www.affiliate-programs-marketing.com/

Title- Affiliate Programs

Description1- affiliate-programs-marketing.com is going to release a top notch software called Affiliate elite. The software will be released limited in number and first come first served method will be employed. So don't miss the opportunity.

After completing please inform us about the current status of our link, reply soon

Thansk
Regards
Dev [redacted]

I could sense some anxiety in his email, so I checked out virtualshopfront.net -- an industry leader. There was no link to reddit. Shocker.

Not that I was actually going to participate in this link exchange, but I still felt a bit cheated. Nonetheless, it was time to come clean.

I'm sorry, Dev, I was just messing with you.

I didn't think you would respond -- most spammers don't.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think what you're doing is pretty reprehensible. Really, does anyone still trade links in these schemes??

Anyway, best of luck with your future partners (spam recipients?),
Alexis

I haven't heard back yet. Maybe I need a new hobby.