SEO is dead? The link spammers haven’t gotten the memo

In the past year some really smart folks that I respect a lot have declared the death of SEO. And while this may be true for high-quality / high-concepts sites building on new domains, it clearly hasn’t stopped the old-school, gray-hat (and worse) SEO hustlers from plying their trade.
When even low-traffic specialty bloggers like me are regularly targeted with link-spam offers like the one below (which I just received today), you know the trade is alive and well…

It’s hard to believe that a Blogger link is worth $40 to me – makes me wonder what the link buyer is paying ($100?). My favorite part is the line that “the link would go to an education site”, backed up with the heartfelt footer message. I don’t think I want to know what kind of “education” that site is selling…