I get a lot of link requests by email for TheJapanesePage.com. The sad thing is 99% of the email requests are spam - or I consider it spam since they are obviously automated and impersonal. I’ll explain below but here is this morning’s email with sensitive information X’ed out:

Hi
I appreciate the work at your
website.[http://www.thejapanesepage.com/readarticle.php?article_id=164]

I am interested to list your website on the homepage of my PR-3 site:
(http://www.xxxx.com)
Your link will go under “Recommended Resources”.

In return, can you please add our following link on your homepage or any related page on your site ?
Where it may help your visitors.

Title: Hair Styling
URL: http://www.xxxx.com/hair-styling/index.html
Description: We hope to provide all the necessary information and tips about hair styles.

Let me know once the above link is added, and I will link back to your site within 24 hours.
Also, we would be happy to link to you first if you reply to this email.

Note: Please do not add our link on links page or links directory.

Please consider it as spam if you have already received this mail.

With Kind Regards
John xxxx
xxx@gmail.com

Now doesn’t this just say, “I’m feeling lazy today so I will download a 30 day free shareware program that will automagically grab URLs from Google and spam, I mean, email the respected webmasters. Yeah, that is good time management.” The end result is an email that screams ’spam’ and asks to link his site about hair care with my site about learning Japanese. Hmmm…

Tony at TJP has a favorite saying

As I often say — if you don’t have the courtesy to take the time to write properly with proper grammar, spelling, syntax, and punctuation, you are showing that you don’t think we are worth your time and effort.

So what kind of time and effort should we put out on YOUR behalf, then? In other words, if you so clearly disrespect me, I will not bother helping you.

Well said and applicable here too. I have to sort through hundreds of emails a day - most of which is spam. On a typical day, I answer 20-30 questions by email (without the aid of automated software) and probably spend 2-3 hours JUST doing email throughout the day. If you don’t respect my time, why should I respond?

TJP has a button that says ‘Add a Link.’ If the requester truly ‘appreciated’ my site, all he would have to do is click on it to be added to the links page. Of course he would have to be a member, but since he ‘appreciates’ my site, I am sure this means he is a member in good standing.

Please consider it as spam if you have already received this mail.

Wow, how incredibly considerate.

Occasionally I get real emails from real webmasters starting a real Japanese language related website. Unless it has no content (yet), I usually immediately link to them to help them in Google ratings. I like helping people get started. But do I like people who impersonally spam… ah, no.