So you’ve received an email from webmatchers.net offering payment for ad links placed on pages of your web site. A hundred bucks or two of easy money for some links. What could be the harm?

This morning we received an email from webmatchers.net, asking us to “review some links” for advertising on a small site we run. If we agreed to the placement of the links and were willing to allow them to remain at least a year, they would pay us up to $100. If you’ve received an e-mail similar to what we describe, then red flags are surely going up or you wouldn’t be here looking at this article. Remember the old adage…if it sounds too good to be true, well…

Here’s a copy of the email:

Hey there,

I’d like to pay you to review some links for this page on your site:
(link to page they wanted to put ads on)

If you like the sites I send over and you’re willing to add them, I’ll pay you up to $100. I only ask that you leave them live for at least a year.

You have a lot of great info on (such and such) and I think these links would be a great addition.

Please let me know if you’re interested and whether you would prefer payment through PayPal or by check. I look forward to hearing from you! 🙂

Thanks for your time!
Casey
casey@webmatchers.net

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Basically this is what we see happening here. They give you a bunch of links to add to a page on your site, some to legitimate “good” sites and slip some in that are to “not so good” sites. The credibility of your page and the good links give the “not so good” links some good search engine mojo. Are you feeling dirty yet? Don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to see when I’m searching Google for “pugs” are results for an organ enhancing snake oil for the “man in my life”.

In any case, think twice about agreeing to a one year term for advertising of this nature. Even if this wasn’t a scam, there is no guarantee that the content of the page you’re linking to won’t change over that year period. You’re putting your own site’s reputation at risk. You’re also risking your own search engine placement and ranking if they see you as linking to bad neighborhoods and search engine spammers. You’re also likely to turn off legit advertisers and site visitors, and putting your own credibility in question with them, in participating in such linking schemes. Is it really worth it?

By the way, webmatchers.net says on their site that they’ve been around since 2005, yet their domain registration shows:
Creation Date: 08-jul-2008
That seems very suspicious, doesn’t it?

Our advice: Don’t fall for it. Don’t do this to your site and/or business and don’t do it to the search engines. Just put that email in the spam bucket where it belongs.