Yesterday I was offered $100 by a company to write about them in a positive way on TechCrunch. I guess this was bound to happen at some point. I will never write about the company that offered this, will never mention their name, and will never link to them.
And no, it’s not because they only offered $100. 
It’s because I think it was unethical for them to offer this, even though they phrased it as a fee to “get to the top of my list”. I don’t want to be associated with a company like that.
How stupid!
Just throw an exclusive preview party and throw an invite. Of course, make sure the invite lists that mountain of sushi and vitals.
Wow, that is something else. Way to handle it and make it perfectly clear where you stand on the matter.
$100?
100 friggin’ dollars?!
If they respect you that little, it makes you wonder why they’d care to try to bribe you get your attention in the first place.
Hilarious! How about $10k or something and a party invite?
What a joke! Anyone want to start guessing who it was?
You might actually want to put a disclaimer in your About/Bio page on TechCrunch on just that topic.
Looks like a new way for Web 2.0 companies to get noticed
Pay Per Review
… so Mike, how much would it take for you to let your wife sleep with Robert Redford?
Integrity is everything. Good move.
Very sad… Standard procedure is to request ad space and fire off press releases, so this individual is rather green.
If one day the team member who offered the bribe leaves that company, I would reconsider your blackout. People do stupid things all the time, and their contemporaries suffer, but should their successors as well?
good decision. how desperate and worthless could this company be? why not do what any other web 2.0 upfart does and let the users speak for the company. if their service is at all decent, it should speak for itself. unfortunately, they had to go and try to bribe you. i guess bribes were bound to start rolling into your inbox considering you are the source for upcoming web 2.0 services.
$100? blech.
If anyone wants to give my $100, I’ll blog about them on supr.c.ilio.us.
So…basically it takes around $100 to get to the top of your ‘black/hit list’…
So, you don’t want to name them? C’mon Mike, you can tell us. We’ll keep it to ourselves. Honest.
100$
Mike you’ve finally made it big time. That has to be part of the reason why they are on the blacklist that is a major slight. On average do you know how many hits a website gets by being profiled by you? It is definitely worth more than 100$.
How about if I offer you $100 to write about a competitor? Are they blacklisted?
so can I have the hundred bucks? i’ll put it to good use, something wholesome like online gambling or the dog track.
I’m not going to name names but plenty of celebrated bloggers mention they would give my company a write-up on their blog for $175.
For $175, I can hire some 8th graders to create shallow tech blogs that scrape from other blogs, comment spam popular blogs and promote my site with positive bias for 6 months.
But I’m not interested in PR, I’m interested in creating a compay with a solid foundation. Business operations that think Buzz & PR is the key to online success are short-sighted people. Buzz & PR is one of the few things in a startup that can wait….
I’ll give you $120.
Wow, Mike, the domain hundredollarweb20reviews.com is still available.
Ok, I’m going to stick a proverbial spanner in the works. Whta if your were offered $100, or whatever, to give an OBJECTIVE review? Would that still be wrong? Is it any different from sending you a mail asking you to review ‘my startup’ or Web 2.0 effort? It just might speed up the process, though. Not questioning your integrity Mike, just curious as to whether or not objectivity would be a motivator??