IKN asks: What to do about Aaron Wise of Benzinga?

In this post I'm asking for your advice, but first you need to picture the scene so here goes.

I don't know whether it's a good or a bad thing, but it's true that your humble scribe gets a lot of mails along the lines of "Hi! Your blog is great! Would you like to write for us?" from those aggregation-type websites. I usually write a simple "no thank you" by way of reply, but as it happens in September I decided to see what one actually had to offer before refusing. So to get you up to speed here's what happened, word for word. The only things changed from the originals are the removal of the @ signs so that spambots don't pick up on the mail addresses and start sending tons of spam.

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On September 25th, one Aaron Wise from a company called Benzinga wrote this mail to me:

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Aaron Wise wrote:

Your stuff is hilarious! I love it. You have such a unique, Mexican barrancas (am I guessing right?) style, I've never seen any writing like it. Pithy wit but fair and balanced, fun but well-educated... I enjoy your blogs quite a bit.

I am a manager at Benzinga.com and I've been following your blog for a few weeks now and wanted to reach out to see if you would be interested in a partnership. Any interest in becoming a columnist on our site? We have reach of 1-1.5M uniques per month, top-traffic article of 800,000 pageviews, primarily North American audience over 40yrs. old making $50k/year+, etc. Highly financially-focused audience about a wide variety of market topics.

Let me know. We also offer an affiliate program with a 35/65 split on pro.benzinga.com sales. Also other possibilities...

Aaron

So the same day I wrote back with this:

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 6:31 PM, otto rock wrote:
O RLY?

To which Aaron replied (note that the reply came seven minutes later and that our two time clocks are one hour apart...timezones i guess):

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 5:38 PM, Aaron Wise wrote:
lol, yep really

So this is the point where perhaps I should have written that "no thank you" mail, but instead and for once (not least because the guy actually seems to read IKN on occasion and isn't just blind fishing, added to the fact that he does seem to have a decent quantity of brain cells to rub together) I decided to find out more out of sheer cat-kill curiosity:

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 6:55 PM, otto rock wrote:
Ok, so what's in it for me, Mr. Wise?

Money.

Nitty gritty.

gimme your best shot or get the "Thank you, but...." reply.

best, O

To which the Aaron dude replied thusly:

From: Aaron Wise
Date: Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: IKN - Benzinga partnership
To: otto rock


I can offer you some hot info and warrants of POTG at $1 strike because it will return to glory like Elvis.

Um, (1) you could write for us on a traffic-based compensation system, like $10 per 1,000 hits. You would probably be most interested in that... we had a 850,000-hit piece last month... that'd have been nice for you.

If you're not interested in writing, (2) we can offer an affiliate partnership (you get 35% of $39-169 per month subscriptions to Benzinga Pro news, including unlimited residual commission). You could market via a banner or email. We provide customizable copy.

Otherwise, (3) we could offer you a set monthly contract for writing X # of words. This bores me most of the three options, but if you want, feel free to suggest a $.

-Aaron

And that's when I let it drop. I liked the reference to POTG.pk because it showed that he does actually read these humble pages but overall it was the standard stuff, a mix of how they'll make me famous, give me a relative pittance in return and make free money off my back so I just decided to ignore it. no reply, no nothing. I went back to my normal boring little neurotic weblife existence and thought no more of it all until October 14th, when suddenly this appeared in my mailbox:

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 6:53 AM, Aaron Wise wrote:
Any updates from south of the border?

-Aaron

"OK", I thought, "I thought he'd given up, but at least tell him no thanks, it's the least he deserves". So I did:

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 7:55 AM, otto rock wrote:
i have decided that i don't want to be famous or rich, therefore politely decline your kind offer.

To which he replied:

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 12:10 PM, Aaron Wise wrote:
Hey no problem. Maybe in the future. Enjoy your weekend!

And that was that, right? Wrong. Yesterday I got this in the mailbox:

From: Aaron Wise
To: otto rock
Sent: Friday, 4 November 2011, 12:38
Subject: Re: IKN - Benzinga partnership

I think there is room for your stuff here still. Need I mention we have over three million hits per month? Could be quite interesting from an affiliate standpoint. Or...

Besides, we also want to provide more non-biased coverage and analysis of the small-cap sector as one of our differentiating characteristics as a news provider. You fit the mold in that regard.

Let me know what I can offer aside from riches and fame -

Aaron

Which brings me to my search for advice from you guys out there, the readers. What do I reply to this dude, ladies and gentlemen readership of IKN? On the one hand he can't take no for an answer and that's annoying. On the other hand he's only doing his job and at least he's personable and can write an engaging mail.

Like I say, I get maybe a dozen of these "come write for us!!!" offers a year and they're always roughly the same thing, too. The Benzinga model will vary from the Seeking Alpha model will vary from the Stocktwits model will vary from Wikinvest model will vary from the can't-remember-them-all model, but in the end the basic bottom line is that you're giving somebody else free and original content and they pay you peanuts for the privilege. If there's just one lesson I've learned in 3 1/2 years of this blogging malarkey it's that independence is a very valuable commodity in this game and I'm not going to give that up for ten times the amount these aggregation "make you famous" web(para)sites will ever offer.

So what to do about Aaron, folks? Mails with advice appreciated at the usual address and have a good weekend.