Okay so I got an email this morning from someone wanting to do a "guest post" on my blog and they wanted to know if I charge a fee for guest posts / sponsored posts.
Yes, definitely. If you're wasting my time then I am definitely charging a fee. As should everyone who accepts such advertising. Everyone should always charge a fee for their time + the value of the service being delivered (the more popular the website, the higher the fee).
But then I read what the person was advertising...
Bitcoin.
From an economic standpoint it is my opinion that Bitcoin is effectively worthless. Also it could literally crash at any time and become LITERALLY worthless.
So as far as I am concerned Bitcoin (and all cryptocurrencies) are essentially gambling.
The only people making lots of money in that 'industry' are the people "mining" it, and the only people mining it are companies with lots of computing power which have set themselves up in countries where electricity is super cheap (and often involves coal power, which means it comes at the expense of more CO2 contributing to global warming/climate change).
The "Bitcoin miners" then sell their fake currency to "Bitcoin suckers", who buy and sell it to other suckers in the hopes that they will somehow make money off of it.
So the "Bitcoin miners" are effectively the casino providing the gambling chips (also a fake currency)...
And the "Bitcoin suckers" are the gamblers who keep sinking their money into it when they should probably be investing in something else that is more likely to keep its value / improve in value.
So how did I respond to the email?
I quoted a price of $60 USD for sponsored posts about Bitcoin or gambling.
Why such a high price?
Because if they're promoting some kind of Bitcoin banking service then they can definitely afford that price.
Just like a casino website can definitely afford a higher price. They can afford to just throw money at the problem of advertising.
What is also interesting is that every week there is another "Bitcoin banking" company that goes bankrupt and everyone who had their Bitcoins stored there has lost all of their Bitcoins... Which tells you what the state of that "industry" is. Completely unstable and unreliable.
It is effectively a Ponzi scheme built on a house of cards, except the cards are digital and doomed to come crashing down.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of these companies were also faking it. Eg. Selling people "fake Bitcoins" in a digital wallet, and never buying actual Bitcoins to back it up. Thus whenever too many people try to collect by cashing in their Bitcoins the company just declares bankruptcy and absconds with all the real money.
And that kind of fraudulent scam is just one more way for scammers to make real money off of the "Bitcoin suckers".