I knew that website developers would go to great lengths to rise in Google rankings. What I didn’t know was just how far people were willing to go, till I received this email.

Note: I have deleted all the links and names, since that would be giving free publicity to the sites in question – something they are after.

I’m the webmaster of r a s m u s s e n [dot] e d u
I wanted to know if by any chance you would be interested in doing an unbiased review of our site [URL] on your blog http://punyamishra.com/
If you agree we will send you a payment for the review.
Please let me know if you are interested.
If you are interested please click here to receive your money: [LINK to a page on sepblogreview [dot] com with a long alpha-numeric identifier / parameter
If you want to receive more paid review proposals, just click the following link: [LINK deleted]
If you don’t want to ever receive mails from us, just click the following link: [LINK deleted]
If you have any questions just send a reply to this email.
Thank you

I was sufficiently intrigued that I clicked on the second link, the one that asked me if I was interested in getting some money and this is what the page told me:

We are interested in having a review of our product published on your blog.
The review doesn’t have to be positive, you are free to voice your opinion whether it’s good or bad. The review must at least 300 words long and contains at least 3 links pointing to the pages we will provide you and with the anchor text we will provide.
The website you will have to review is [Link]
The review must come from the blog http://punyamishra.com/

Here is more information about the product:
R a sm us sen College has educated people for more than a century and has taken revolutionary strides toward developing career-focused curriculum that will prepare you for your future career. [LINK]
We can send you money as payment for the review.
Click here [LINK] to recieve (sic) payment.

Now I was even more interested – so I clicked on the last link (despite the spelling mistake) and was redirected to a web-form, which asked me to write down the amount of money I would like to receive for the review. I was also warned that if the amount I requested was too high my offer would be rejected. There were other details such as the minimum length of the review (300 words), that it should have a certain number of links to the site being reviewed (at least 3), and that my review should be published within a specific time period (2 days of receipt of the money).

This is where I decided to stop clicking and started writing this post, wondering about the ethics of all this. Turns out that this is pretty standard procedure as this page indicates: How to buy blog reviews for SEO link building

Now I am as fond of free money as the other guy – but isn’t there something problematic about buying links? What would be a right price-point for me to feel ok about writing this review? I mean, all of us have a price, don’t we? Most interesting was the fact that the site in question didn’t care whether or not the review was positive or negative – what mattered was that the review would have three (at least) links! What a strange world we live in?