Wooly-minded Liberals

Once again I was rudely awoken at about 10:30 this morning by the sound of someone stuffing uninvited pamphlets through the letterbox. Rather than right-wing propaganda, I was met by the tell-tale yellow of the Liberal Democrats.

As you'd imagine the LDs had taken a slightly different tack from the UKIP and BNP. They'd decided to use actual party supporters on their leaflet. They've been at this game for long enough to know you cannot fool the electorate with phony ballonie nonsense.

As a Citizen Journalist, it is my responsibility to remain and report from a neutral standpoint. I have a Duty of Care to my readers Mr Coleman and Mess, not to mention the countless tens of others who sometimes drop by the blog by mistake....

....speaking of which (if I may digress?), if you look over to the left sidebar you'll see my blog counter. A blog widget supplied by Blogpatrol. It doesn't just let me see how many visitors I've had it lets me 'drill down' into the stats. I can see all sorts of relevant information about my followers. I can see how many I've had, when they visitied, the computer browser they're using, which country they come from, their IP address and even what search terms they might have used to stumble across the ole bloggeroonie.

It's this last factiod that I'd like to develop further, and it is a factiod that I hope will bring joy to my loyal French friend Mess. Last month I was approached by a firm called WuTravel.com offering me riches beyond my wildest comprehension, at the time my other excellent follower, former school master Mr David Coleman (not the commentator) warned me against it, but Mess went one step further and did some research then sent me a Facebook email explaining that WuTravel.com is definitely an Internet fraud scheme.

Anyway, using the Blogpatrol tool I've noticed that countless tens of people have been drawn to the Barry Newsdesk blog as a direct result of Googling questions about WuTravel.com. Clearly, these people had also been approached by WuTravel.com and clearly they'd done a bit of digging and they came to this very blog and would have read Mess's words of wisdom warning them away from WuTravel.com. That, my friends, it Citizen Journalism in action!!!

Anyway, back to the Liberals, the flyer they sent features a good number of pictures of actual Liberals. They're NOT assamed! Take that BNP and UKIP. There's even a picture of Vince Cable, who looks like my friend Dave's Dad. I've always had a bit of a softspot for the Liberal party, ever since Paddy Ashdown (aka Pantsdown lol), then there was Charles Kennedy, he liked a drink, there's nothing wrong with that, and more recently Sir Menzies Campbell (any relation to Kenny from the Metro I wonder?) - whose name, GET THIS, is actual pronounced Ming. As in Ming the Merciless (he was bald too.....funny, you never saw them in the same room together).

The Lib Dems greatest ally is also their greatest foe. They can pretty much promise what the hell they like because they'll never get into power. It's one of the political ironies of our time.

Anyway, I'm starting to sound like a party political broadcast. I should really be out looking for a job, but it's very difficult to get motivated. If it wasn't for the fact I'm meeting up with Gill later I'd still be in my jimjams.

My own personal Credit Crunch is starting to bite. I'll have to meet up with Gill in Weathersoons I think. I was thinking about asking Gill to move in, it could well get me out of sticky patch mortgage-wise. Then again, I was also thinking that I might be able to rent out the place and go and look after Mum in Lincoln. I called her up the other night and Roger answered. I don't like it. He's getting his feet under the table. If I rent out this place, then I can stay up north for a while until I get myself a new job when the recession stops next year.

Catch you later one and all, reckon I can fit in some Pro Evolution Soccer before I need to go out.

Barry
x

Oh Mr Wu, what should I do?

Last Monday I announced that Brand Newsdesk had been approached by a potential sponsor. None other than WuTravel.com.

I seem to be getting absolutely nowhere with my idea of free porn for London's commuters, The Oyster, and none of the pieces that I have submitted to The Metro have made it into print. While the money that I make at Blockbusters bearly makes ends meet to be honest and so if I want to keep producing lively copy that is enjoyed, for FREE (hint, hint!), by my army of readers, then sadly I think I'm going to have to start taking advertising.

I wrote back to Alyssa at Wu Travel asking for more information. She wrote back, here's what she had to say:

Hi,

Here are our company current marketing packages.

1) For sites PR >= 4, and Alexa in top 100,000, and site is travel topic related, we are willing to buy ads space from SGD 100 /month, and invite them to join our affiliate program

2) For other sites, we can only offer them to join our affiliate program.

You have one good site, but your site traffic is really low. Here is our offer, we are willing to invite you join our affiliate program, and send you USD 50.00 as signup reward.

Here are main features of our affiliate program.

1) Earn 70% of recurring commission, averagely every hotel partner's ads click you will earn USD 0.30 - 0.50

2) Earn passive commission FOREVER. Every visitors, you brought to our site, generate any revenue in the future, you will ALWAYS earn 70% of them.

3) 2 Level Referral Program. Affiliates are encouraged to invite other sites to join our affiliat program, and affiliates will get 10% commission generated by other affiliates.

4) Payment sent out every month through PayPal, with minimun USD 100.

Let's say that you refer 2 visitors to our site a day, and both of them click once on our hotel partners ads. Within 1 year, you will make USD 292 (one click USD 0.40, 0.40 * 2 * 365 = 292).

But wait. For those visitors from your site, they come to our site and generate revenue in the future (1 year, 5 years, 10 years ...), you will still earn commission, even though your site maybe not exist any more. :)

If you can redirect more visitors to our site, you can calculate how much $$$ you will earn!!!!!

You can view our affiliate program details from http://www.wutravel.com/affiliate.html

Please reply me If you are willing to accept our offer, then I will open an affiliate account for you right now, after you put on our banner on your site, I will deposit the money for you.:)

Regards,

I'm not sure about this one readers. For starters, Alyssa didn't even bother to address the message 'Hi Barry' and then she just signed off with 'Regards,'

Also, Alyssa suggests (and I quote) that: "your (my) site traffic is really low." Well ,that's clearly nonesense, you'd only have to read through the last few posts to see that I smashed the 1000 hit mark only four months after launching the site!!!

Something makes me think that this might be one of those Internet scams that you sometimes read about in The Metro. You read about old ladies sending all their savings to Nigerian Princes under the false promise of a share in their fortunes or people being sent an email from their bank asking for all their sign-on information, only to find out a couple of days later that someone has emptied their bank accounts.

The fact is, though, the people who fall for such blatant rip-offs are kind of asking for it. They're being motivated by GREED! There's no such thing as a free lunch. When a deal looks to good to be true, it usually isn't true, that's what my Mum used to tell me as we walked around Lincoln market at the weekends. Still, I've read and re-read Alyssa's message and I can't see where the catch is. By this time next year I could be a millionnaire.

What should I do? Mess? Mr Coleman?