Today I got an “Invitation to Contribute to the RGE Monitor Group Blogs,” or, what I like to call “RUBE-ini’s Aggregator Plan.” The deal is this; I would give them non-exclusive rights to redistribute my work, and they’d give me the ol’ reach-around, oops!, they’d give me a couple of link-backs, plus a free subscription to the RGE Monitor. WOW! I know, I say it louder. Since that subscription price is $5K a year, I would like to see some of that coinage if I were participating, because, after all, every additional page load is another chance to sell subscriptions to RGE Monitor!

It’s pretty obvious that Nouriel isn’t a longstanding reader of my work, or else he wouldn’t have bothered sending me this invitation. If you want to see what I think of Nouriel’s work, you might try reading this post. I can’t believe his work sells for $5K annually, but I guess there’s a sucker born every minute; after all, I bet Eliot wished the charges were annual instead of hourly!

The guy doesn’t bother personalizing the invite with my name, which is part of my blog’s name, just “Dear colleague,” and sends it to FIFTY-ONE other bloggers without even blind CCing it. Thanks for the additions to my contact list, dude. I’m tempted to send back a copy of this post, “reply to all.”

Hint to all y’all thinking about putting together aggregators and asking me for content: I already HAVE a non-paid writing job, I don’t need another one.

Here’s the letter in its entirety, only email, addresses, and phone numbers are omitted (no need to give the spam harvesters any help):

Dear colleague,

I am writing you today as we at RGE Monitor (www.rgemonitor.com) would like to invite you to be a contributor to our RGE group blogs. As you are already a successful blogger we are not asking you to create new content for our blogs; rather we are asking for your authorization to allow us to cross post in full text on our group blogs items that you have already written for your blog. Currently at RGE Monitor we have seven group blogs on the U.S. Economy, Global Macro, Finance and Markets, Emerging Markets, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

In our RGE group blogs we have hundreds of economists and experts – from a variety of countries and institutions - writing posts/editorials about the major macroeconomic, financial and policy issues that are being debated today, both at the country level and at the global level and that are at the center of the attention of investors, academic scholars and policy makers. Some of these contributors are – like you – individuals that already have a blog, in which case we cross post the items that they write on their blogs to our RGE blogs; other contributors don’t have a blog and contribute original content to our blogs from time to time.

Note that RGE is the leading global research and information platform in the world (its previous incarnation was ranked as the #1 economics web site in the world by The Economist magazine) with hundreds of thousands of readers for its totally free blogs and thousands of subscribers to its premium products. Our readers include individuals in the very top financial institutions around the world, the top policy institutions and top academic institutions. So – by allowing us to cross post on our blogs items you have written for your own blog - you will have premium real estate (as the blogs would be featured in the RGE Monitor home page and in all the other relevant country and/or topic pages of RGE Monitor) and a massive additional high quality and broad audience for your ideas and views. Also, any item of yours that we cross post on our blogs will have a link back to your blog page where it was originally posted.

Also we do not expect any exclusivity: i.e. you can have items from your blog be published on any other online or offline publication such as SeekingAlpha.com or any other blog aggregator, etc. We want you to maximize the online venues where your views are presented and the RGE group blogs will be an additional forum where your writings receive wider readership. Also we do not restrict in any form the length of time for which this mutual arrangement works. You can start allowing us to cross post your blog items to our group blogs as a trial and you can then decide to stop this arrangement any time you want to. So this is a “no-strings attached” arrangement. Trying it is zero time and effort cost for you – as we take care of the cross posting of your writings ourselves – and you can always stop this deal if you want to.

Note that our blogs are totally free and hence they are aimed to give prominence to the views of our external collaborators. We are selective in the economists and experts we are approaching to contribute to our blogs and we aim at the highest quality of contributions. Also, since many of those who contribute are not bloggers but rather busy academics and professional we already have as our contributors some of the top economists and experts in the world from the very best institutions; you will thus be in the good company of many high profile scholars and experts. So it is both an honor for us to have someone of your caliber to contribute and a major opportunity for you to expand the presentation of your views to a huge and highly qualified audience around the world.

In exchange for your participation to our group blogs, we can offer you a free subscription to RGE Monitor for as long as you allow us to cross post your blog items on our group blogs (our per site paid subscriptions start at $5000 per year). We are also sure that the extended broad exposure that your ideas will get is also valuable to you. We will also widely publicize this blog to our audience with emails to over 100,000 contacts and via ads on our site.

Our groups blogs are some of most visited parts of the RGE Monitor. Also, items that you write on your blog and that we cross post will be assigned to all the relevant RGE group blogs based on their subject matter. For example, an item on the current credit crunch in the U.S. will appear on the U.S. blog, the Global Macro blog and the Finance and Markets blog. We will cross post to our group blogs items that you write that are germane to economic and financial topics (so if over a weekend you blog about your favorite music or film that posting will not be published on the RGE blogs); also to keep a balance of contributions on our group blogs not every items that you write on your blog will be cross posted to our blogs; we will keep the discretion of choosing the most relevant items and assigning them to the relevant RGE group blog.

Moreover, for any contributor to our group blog we create an individual “bio page” where you can put your photo, a short bio, a link to your blog page, a link to your home page (if you have one), a link to your CV, a link to any research paper you may have written; listings of all of your blog items that have been cross posted on our blogs will also be automatically added in this bio page.

We hope you accept our offer to broaden the audience that is reading your excellent blog. If you do agree, we can then talk by phone for details or even continue the conversation by email. My collaborator at RGE Monitor – Dr. Vitoria Saddi – may contact you directly to let you know more about this opportunity and answer any question you may have. I do very much hope you will accept this invitation to contribute to a most exciting new intellectual venture that we hope will greatly improve the quality of dialogue on global macroeconomic, policy and financial issues. It will widely extend the audience that is already reading your blog. Feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.

Best regards,
Nouriel