Forum menu
Wow, top respect. That's why I keep coming back to this site 🙂
Thanks Mark for the change of heart, much appreciated.
Have also renewed my cancelled sub, fwiw- realise that its not really fair railing against something if I'm not willing to do something to help out.
Excellent post Mark, not just for the decision, but for being so honest and up front about making a wrong call.
It’s not illegal or immoral, at worst it’s a bit of a rip-off
...so you're saying it's a rip-off, but moral? 🤣
Consumption of alcohol must not be linked to increased popularity, sexual success, confidence, sporting achievements or mental performance. Anything which portrays drinking alcohol as a challenge or as having therapeutic qualities is banned, as is anything that promotes binge drinking or suggests that alcohol can solve your problems.
Beer and bikes have been associated on this site as long as I’ve been coming here, since 2003, and it’s only now that someone is clutching their pearls and having a fit of the vapours, and is coming over all moral majority?
Jeez, get a sodding life already! #rollseyes
What this says:
I’m not going to pull the article because we have a good faith agreement with the agency that provided the copy.
...is you value the relationship with the agency that provided the copy more than the one you have with your audience. That's a dangerous line to tread, but its your website so your prerogative.
However, if you genuinely don't want STW to become somewhere that you can just buy links to your site to boost your SEO then I'd suggest you consider adding "nofollow" tags to the backlinks on that article. I don't know what STW charges for a sponsored piece like this but in my own experience its many times the number of readers you would need to click through and order their ESTA from them... that tells me that the marketing decision at their end was unlikely to be about getting clicks and ESTA applications from mountain bikers (especially since presumably very few UK based MTBers are planning travel to the US right now), but rather the purpose of the article is to boost their SEO by effectively buying links back from a highly credible, well-ranked site. So your "by the way there's another option" box at the end helps out the STW readers but doesn't help everyone who types "esta application" into google - we can blame google for that - but people who provide backlinks knowing that it boost the recipient's pagerank must be at least partially culpable.
you value the relationship with the agency that provided the copy more than the one you have with your audience
I don’t think that is fair comment. I took it as Mark sticking to what he’d agreed with the agency but wouldn’t take a similar ad in future. That together with the text added on the page seemed reasonable to me
I've resubbed off the back of Mark's post. My opinion but that ended right.
Thanks Mark, appreciate the update, seems a reasonable course of action.