Hungry for cash?

Well, how hungry are you? Or greedy? Or delusional? For a moment of delusion, I almost fell into a trap. There is this organisation operating on the web going around offering to put paid advertisements on your website. How does it all start?

They first send you e-mail that reads:
----quote---
We have reviewed your blogger.com blog on behalf of one of our
clients that would be interested in placing advertising with you.

Client profile :

DoingFine (http://doingfine.org)
New project (<1 month old)
Theme A forum dedicated to those things that came out right and worked out fine.
----unquote----

What it doesn't say is which blog it is referring to. You see, I've got several blogs under Blogger, each with varying frequency of updates and visitation activity.

Next, the client website, doingfine.org site, is really nothing but a couple of forums. It is not selling anything, publishing anything substantial. Why would it be interested in driving traffic to it?

The e-mail goes on to say:
----quote----
This would be a weekly, monthly or yearly arrangement. In either case
we will require a one time, one day (24 hours) free placement in order
to test the quality and quantity of traffic your website can actually
provide*. Within this interval, we will make a final determination,
based on the traffic volume, quality, and your asking price. Should
we find your terms acceptable, this trial day will count towards the
agreed interval.

Kindly let us know if you would be interested, which arrangement best
suits your editorial needs, and what rates you would like to charge.
We prefer using PayPal but may be able to accomodate alternative
payment methods.
----unquote----

Fair enough. I wouldn't expect anyone to hand over cash when they haven't got the goods. But how much to ask for? Nevermind if this all look suspicious. Money talks. I googled for the answer. Varying amounts were suggested. But the most sensible advice was to ask for an offer. I did that. The very next day (these guys work fast!), I received further communications to this effect:

----quote----
We've created a button for you, please review it here :

(some URL ending with a gif link that contains string of unintelligible characters)

We feel it goes well with the general look and feel of your blog. Please
link it to

(again, a url link to a php program code)
----unquote----

This begins to look like a scam, but I ignored it. I clicked on the url, but it wasn't meaning. They also provide html code to put on my website/blog. I did that but upon publishing the html codes were stripped out, so the html code couldn't display any icon link. I got suspicious - finally - and did the smart thing - I google 'Polimedia Advertising' and 'doingfine.org' and found out that this is likely a scam of sorts.

Now what made me think that my blog was any good anyway for anybody to pay a single cent towards it? Only Google has pennies to throw my way. Sigh....