"I need a bit of legal advice with international advertising" Topic

I had a guy e-mail me from a company called Media Discovery based out of the UK. They wanted to pay me to add a post to my blog that was supposed to be related to my industry and promoting another business.

The post was supposed to be either a review type article or an informational piece. I get the article they wrote and its an informational piece the problem is its focused industry.

I am in the US and this article focuses on D&D themed virtual Slot Machines and the links point you to the said casino site where you can play it for money. The website is based in Malta

My question is how much trouble am I going to get into promoting an on-line casino here in the US where as far as I know online gambling is illegal and a federal crime.

Spam Spam Spammity Spam.

I just junk anything of that nature. Good for them, not so much for you.

They're juicing links, I'd avoid if I were you. Unless it's serious money!

And make them pay first if you do.

Sounds incredibly dodgy.

And even if the deal is above board, visiting a blog to find a post like that would put me right off visiting it again. Not because I don't like the gambling industry, but because anything associated with online gambling smacks to me of sleaziness and spam, which would mean your blog would be (unfairly) tarred with the same brush.

Think very carefully about this, because I think it'll do your site more harm than good …

I don't think it is spam as there is a website and the e-mail address matches said site which most spammers just overlay an address on someone else's account

I only considered it because the offer was $80.00 USD to have the article posted for one year and my blog probably doesn't get more then 100 visits a year as the main site only gets about 100 new visiters a month.

Even if you don't care enough about your blog to not worry about such junk appearing on it, by responding to the original spammer (which I presume they were to send you the unsolicited email in the first place), you just made spamming worth his while. And whoever wants to encourage spammmers??!!

But I still think it sounds dodgy. Paying you $80 USD for only a potential 100 visitors a month? From their end, I can't see the business sense in that! If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is too good to be true …

I would not normally have even replied but when the site matched the e-mail address I thought it might be legit. Here is what there site says they do.

Leading the industry in Online Branding and Media Planning,
Media Discovery generates more traffic from more targeted niche sources.

The sample he sent showed a review of a car and it linked to some consumer site. I was told I would have the final approval on the blog post.

I had asked who in my industry would be spending any kind of significant money on advertising to afford there services. He replied saying he would send me the article for my approval.

Seeing it promoted on-line gambling concerned me more about the legal repercussions then loss of customers. New customers I can find, jail time I can't get out of.

They are trying to get your bank details, which they will use to screw you up financially – it can take months if not longer to undo the damage they can do with false charges etc. The 'Malta' address is almost certainly bogus, you do not have to have a physical presence to register an Internet site to a particular country.

Run and don't look back.

What they're doing is juicing the search results for their client. They will get a bunch of websites and blogs that are active, i.e have had publishing activity in the previous three months, to put up some content with their clients link.

By publishing that link on your blog/website, Google's search algorithm will believe that the site you linked to is potentially credible, which will be reinforced by how many other suckers will publish the same link. This will increase the publishing rank of the client site, meaning they will appear higher in any search results which are made for whatever that site is tagged for.

What will then happen fairly quickly is that the Google algorithm will recognise this is just link juicing, and they will decrease your website/blogs publishing rank by quite a bit, meaning that in less than six months (probably less than two or three) you won't appear anywhere near the top 30 – 50 results of any search made on Google that may be relevant to your site because as far as Google is concerned you're just taking advertorials. In other words you'll lose more than $80 USD worth of potential visitors to your site because you wanted to trouser some chump change for xmas!

And of course there's the matter of getting paid, you'll most likely never see a cent. These search tricks only run for a couple of weeks max, it really depends where else on the long tail they're wanting to sit.

Now legally if you live in a jurisdiction that regulates the advertising of online gambling, then you may need to consider that by publishing the link you are knowingly and explicitly publishing advertising material for online gambling.

You have to ask, to figure what this is about? Don't be the sucker born on this particular minute!

You have to ask yourself: is the likely pittance you'll get (if it's not a total scam to begin with) worth the negative impression it will create with your visitors?

I had the same people email me. I run a business not a blog. If it was a blog then I would have been fine with it. I think they were open to me even writing the article but the promised cash wasn't worth it to me.

It's not really spam per se. It's just a marketing ploy and attempted SEO boost.

I did question what people in our industry would be using them for advertising and got the reply, will send you an article.

And then the article contained gambling links which set off my red flags.

I had no idea whether the ad would be for GW or someone else in the industry until I asked or saw the ad.

Still no one has said if advertising the gambling is illegal here in the US or not. Just out of curiosity.

Depends on your state, but there is some federal law applicable. If you can Google the company you can google the law.

Don't ask or take legal advice on the TMP or any other hobby site. Start using that big noggin on your shoulders.