For today's Random Bicycle Crap Fridays, patent pending, I am once again diverging from my normal pattern of irrelevant nonsensical crap and featuring something I find just a little ironic.
Obviously, people that visit this blog know that its about trying to live carfree for a full year besides the other transportation and urban design related musings. But this small little tiny detail must have slipped by someone recently when they wanted to advertise on this site.
A spokes-person for RentACarNow.com emailed me inquiring about possible advertising space. Here is the email:
My name is ____,
I work for RentACarNow.com, a rental car search engine.
I stumbled on http://imaginenocars.blogspot.com/ and was interested in advertising on your front-page.We are interested in a link featuring our company.
Would you be interested in something like this? Also, would you be willing to set up a 6 month or 1 year deal?
Please let me know.
Thank you for your time.
I personally find this fairly amusing, as I never set out upon this journey with the idea that I would make any money. Not only that but obviously this person didn't spend that much time figuring out what this blog is about, but maybe that is my fault. Do rental cars count as "alternative transportation"?
I guess these are the kinds of opportunities/hassles that I have to now deal with since becoming a "new media" content producer/shit shoveler. The kind of opportunities I like having offered to me are more like book reviews (which come with free books). I had my first complimentary book sent to me by a publisher titled, After the Car, by Kingsley Dennis and John Urry. I have not started reading it yet, but now that I'm done with Jane Jacob's masterpiece, I can finally move on.
What I want to know from the few readers that have made it this far, and I'm guessing thats not many since there is now video of a cyclist hitting their nuts on something, is is there a difference between the two offers?
I automatically accepted the offer for a review copy of the book, but have yet to respond to the advertising offer. After the Car seems to fit perfectly with the message/bullshit I broadcast from this blog on a daily basis, but the rental car thing is just plain contradictory. But am I selling out by accepting either of the offers? Or would I be selling out if I accepted the rental car advertising offer?
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13 hours ago
2 comments:
That email had to be sort of auto-generated (excuse the pun) because you have "Cars" in the title of your site.
I don't really see much as "selling out"... so long as you are honest about what you're doing and disclose about any free stuff you get. An Ad, of course, is an Ad, so it is abundantly clear that you are trying to make a buck while you do your thing.
I have ads on my site, in the hope that someday I will make a little money by doing something I would be doing anyway!
I think its pretty easy to tell when someone is publishing stuff on the web solely in an attempt to make money. Their sites are often annoying with ads and the content rarely original. Your site is the opposite... keep up the good work, and don't sweat a little bit of free stuff here and there.
Hey, I've been reading your blog after finding it through a comment on streetsblog. We live in Seattle without a car, and at least for my family rental cars definitely count as alternative transportation. We've used hourly (zipcar) or traditional rentals (Enterprise, etc) for getting to suburban birthday parties, Mt Rainer for camping, and so on.
Of course, the email is probably spam.
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