Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

You’d think that dodgy publishers, publicists, and others would know better than to spam Writer Beware. But no. Disproving the frequent spammer claim that their email lists are carefully targeted, I get quite a substantial number of advertisements, press releases, and solicitations.

Today’s solicitation (which I’ve reproduced below) comes from Global Talk Radio, an Internet radio network. It encourages me to sign up for a “promotional interview” that “might open doors to new opportunities.”

The catch? GTR is vanity radio. Hosts pay to have shows; guests pay to be interviewed. The carrot? A supposedly large, fast-growing, “highly targeted” audience. GTR’s actual audience metrics, however, say something a bit different.

On GTR’s front page, there’s a screenshot of its traffic ranking from Ranking.com, under the headline “Global Talk Radio’s traffic surges!” The screenshot appears to show a big jump–from the 180,000 range into the 100,000 range over the course of a few months. However, if you look closely, you’ll see that these figures are from 2009 and early 2010. 2012 figures from Ranking.com peg GTR right down around 180,000 again. Three years later, its audience hasn’t actually grown at all.

The info from Quantcast, which measures actual visitors, isn’t any more encouraging. Even if, as GTR claims, “traffic monitoring sites tend to only track about 10% of a website’s true traffic,” 15,000 visitors a month is not exactly a mass audience. Last but not least, GTR’s Alexa ranking is far from impressive (compare, for instance, with the ranking for this blog).

Audiences for individual shows will vary, obviously. But overall, buying an interview on GTR is not likely to get you a lot of exposure. As I say so often here and elsewhere–there are better uses for your promotional dollar.

You do get to download a FREE MP3 of your interview, which you can post on your website. To those who don’t know how GTR works, it will look satisfyingly official–right alongside your faux award from Reader’s Favorite and your claim of Amazon bestsellerdom based on your #2 position on the Spiritual Fantasy Novels for Teenage Misfits list.

Here’s a new and FUN way to promote your book!

Talk about it “on the air” in your own words… reach a highly-targeted audience and you might open doors to new opportunities!  By some estimates, there are over 1,000,000 million books and e-books published every year (that’s 2700 per day) — A RADIO INTERVIEW CAN SET YOU APART FROM EVERYONE ELSE!

Global Talk Radio produces 5-minute and 10-minute professional interviews with authors and entrepreneurs for our top-rated “In The News” program.  Interviews are pre-recorded by telephone, and you supply “talking points” to help focus the conversation on what is most important.  Recent guests included Emmy-nominated writer/producer Dr. Kenneth Atchity, authors Melvin Abercrombie and Kimball Carr, health expert Dr. Herb Ross, executive success coach Susan Freeman, and business owner Cristine Berensohn. You could be next!

Your promotional interview includes:

• A professional interview, recorded by phone
• Your interview is posted on our station’s site indefinitely
• Your archive is fed into Google and other search engines via keywords
• You will also receive “honorable mention” on our home page
• GTR will hyperlink your archive to a website or web page of your choice
• You can download a FREE MP3 copy of the interview
• THIS WEEK ONLY!!  Send us your picture or graphic, and we’ll post it with a link back to your website!

Hurry!  Only 5 guest spots are available!  (Promotion ends Friday, January 11th and is first-come, first-served.)

5-minute interviews… ONLY $97 (regularly $200)
10-minute interviews… ONLY $147 (regularly $300)

Sign-up is easy.  Please visit us at http://www.globaltalkradio.com/publicityworks.htm for details and to book a guest spot.  (Limited spots are available, first-come first-served.  Not all applications will be approved.)

All the best,

Jen Harris
Global Talk Radio
406 Amapola Avenue #210
Torrance, CA 90501