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Demand Media Studios Chairman/CEO quits the company he started

Demand Studios was Richard Rosenblatt's brainchild.  Not any more. He's leaving the company. He already quit as Chairman and will be leaving his CEO post by the end of this month.

The company will probably find a new CEO and keep on going, but Rosenblatt's leaving sure looks like a vote of no-confidence.

Freelance writers, as always, should stay alert and avoid relying too heavily on any one company.

Bukisa stopped paying revenue share

No Money -- photo by Alina Sofia

Another one bites the dust.  It's the same old story that we've heard from many of the other content sites -- Bukisa never recovered from Google's Panda and Penguin updates. Changes in the policies of their advertisers -- AdSense and Chitika -- also reduced the site's income.

The site is still up, and management is hoping you will choose to leave your content on the site to share your knowledge and to promote yourself as an expert. However, you are free to edit or delete your content or remove your account entirely at any time.

Anyone here write for them?  If so, were you expecting this or did it catch you by surprise?

No more posts showing my income

I felt the need for more privacy and decided to take down the posts that showed my content-site income.

I didn't delete them completely, though. They're still here in draft form in case I ever change my mind and decide to repost them.

Catching up with the content site news

Hi. I haven't written in this blog for almost a year. I got tried of tracking and publishing my content-site income. It got to be too much trouble for the small amount of money I was making.  I may start doing it again at some point, on a less detailed scale, but I have to think about that.

For now, I'd like to update what I know about what's been going on with the sites since the last time I wrote here.

Demand Studios
They raised their rates, but they are also looking for more substantial experience, credentials, and degrees in the subject-matter areas they cover.

Helium
They said they will be launching a redesigned site before the end of the year.

Media Piston
Shut down.

Textbroker
They raised rates for their clients, but didn't raise pay for their writers. It seems like a lot of the work has shifted to team orders. On some days, the open order pool is almost empty, although I guess that could change.

WriterAccess
There's more competition for orders now after an influx of new writers, but it's still a good site for good writers.

Writers Domain
A lot of new writers signed on, but they are still accepting more writers periodically. Easy work.

Yahoo! Voices
This is the site that used to be Associated Content. I really haven't kept up with what's been going on there lately, but I've heard some grumbling.

Are you working for any of these sites or any other content sites?  Please share your opinions in the comments below. Pooling information helps everyone.

If you want to comment anonymously, please select Name/URL from the drop-down box and make up a name. That way, if someone wants to reply to your comment, they don't have to refer to you as "The second Anonymous," or "Anonymous at 6:31 p.m."

Rants, raves, warnings, and neutral opinions are all welcome.  Any detail you can provide about what, specifically, you like or don't like about a particular site would be fantastic.

Play nice.  Don't insult your fellow commenters who may have different opinions than yours.

Conference call with Helium CEO Mark Ranalli (Nov. 15, 2012)

(I listened to the conference call so you didn't have to)

Helium member Eszter Vajda interviewed CEO Mark Ranalli (she in her dining room, he in his office, via a Skype-like video system) with 15 people listening.

If you're familiar with Helium, there wasn't much in the call that you haven't heard before.  The main bit of news was that the new site design, long promised to be unrolled by the end of this year, will probably be delayed until next year.


Ranalli also said that they are "not promising" that writing for the helium.com portion of the site will "actually pay your mortgage."  (Someone should tell that to the cheerleaders on the forum, who still insist "the sky's the limit.") Any significant money to be made, he said, is in Content Source, the freelance assignment part of the site.

That's about it as far as news that is relevant to writers. The rest is mostly background information about the company. If you want to watch/hear the whole call for yourself, click on the viewer below:

(Editing to add 11/30/12 -- I just noticed that the broadcast is no longer available.  I don't how for how long it's been gone or why -- I don't know whether it's a temporary glitch, whether Spreecast only stores past broadcasts for a limited time, or whether Helium took the broadcast down for some reason. The conspiracy theorist in me likes the last explanation, but I really have no idea.)

(Editing to add 3/1/13 -- Just heard that the broadcast's disappearance is due to a technical glitch at Spreecast.)

Poll: How much have you made at content sites in the LAST 30 DAYS?

Where have you made the most money recently on content sites?

I thought it would be fun to try some polls. This one asks which content site has paid you the most during the last 30 days.

British writers: Yahoo Contributor Network now has a UK site

Writers living outside the U.S. have been unhappy with Yahoo Contributor Network (formerly Associated Content) ever since the site stopped paying them (under most circumstances) a couple of years ago.

Now UK writers, at least, who like the Yahoo model can write for the company for pay again at Yahoo Contributor Network's new UK site for UK-resident writers only.  It works the same way the U.S. site does, with paid assignments, revenue share, and the opportunity to publish on high-traffic Yahoo sites.

A recent blog post from Yahoo said "Yahoo! Contributor Network UK is currently looking for talented writers on parenting, beauty, technology, fashion, fitness, food, weddings, movies, TV, and celebrities. Potential contributors sign up at uk.contributor.yahoo.com/signup and, once approved by Yahoo! UK’s editorial team, they will be eligible to claim assignments."

See the official post for more information.

More sites like Textbroker

The Textbroker business model must be working well, because a lot of similar sites are springing up. In this type of site, customers post requests for specific articles, writers claim assignments from a list, and the site takes a percentage of the price.

These broker sites appear to be Panda-proof, because they are not posting articles on one huge website, but instead selling them directly to customers, who typically use them on highly targeted sites.

Recently I've heard about two broker sites I hadn't heard of before:

Media Piston -- I don't have any personal experience there, but a writer friend said that their rates were similar to Textbroker's. The editorial feedback, she said, was very helpful. They take international writers. Site  [Update -- Media Piston is now closed]

Scripted -- I heard about this site when a rep from the company left a comment on this blog. Their site lists prices for customers, but I couldn't find any info on the site, without registering, about how much they pay writers. Site / apply

If anyone has any personal experience with these sites, please leave a note in the comments.

Update:  I signed up with Media Piston to see what it was like.  The pay is substantially lower than what I am now getting elsewhere, so there were no assignments there I was tempted to claim. They don't publish a pay/word rate, only rates for individual articles, but I spot-checked some articles, and the pay rate was less than 2 cents/word for all of them, and even that was contingent on earning a bonus. Like most of the broker sites, the pay gets better as you climb your way up the ratings "ladder," but unlike many of the other sites, Media Piston doesn't reveal what the top rates are.  The sign-up process is quick, the site design is attractive and easy to navigate, and the company seems quite legit. Might be a good choice for new writers, writers currently working for a similar or lower payrate elsewhere, and writers who have the time and energy to work their way up to higher payrates without knowing, in advance, what those are.

Update 2:  After looking around the site a bit more, I'm actually not sure if there is a ratings "ladder" to climb, as there is in Textbroker and WriterAccess, or if you can just get higher bonuses on individual articles based on your work on those particular articles alone. I did hear through the grapevine that you can get a bonus that is twice as much as the amount stated on the assignment form. The forums seem pleasant, and the owners seem to be accessible. I'm still not feeling tempted to try it, though, unless I run out of work elsewhere.

Update 3: Well, curiosity got the better of me (I'm always curious about how different sites work), and when I saw a very short, easy assignment that paid a bit more per word than the rest, I took it.

Update 4: I submitted my first assignment. They lead you by the hand through the submission process, which could be attractive to people new to Internet writing. I had some problems with the cursor jumping to the top of the input form, which may be a browser-related problem, and there didn't seem to be any way to save work in progress. Otherwise, it was all very easy. They send the work through a peer review system, which I'm not thrilled about, as I've had problems on other sites that used peer review with people "correcting" or rejecting work that wasn't wrong in the first place. I'd much rather work with professional editors. But we shall see. Oh, and apparently there is a "ladder" after all, as they say that doing well on assignments can "unlock" higher paying ones.  But they don't say what that higher payment is.

Update 5: The article was accepted, and I got all the available bonuses. The editor fixed some minor issues without bouncing the article back to me. I also received friendly "outreach" emails from a company staff member. Everything went smoothly and was very pleasant -- but the pay, even with all the bonuses, was only about half of what I am getting elsewhere for similar work. I'm going to keep an eye on the site but put it on the back burner for now, at least while I still have work elsewhere.

Update 8/21/12:  Here are a few more sites I recently heard about that work on the Textbroker model. Both, alas, are low paying. I don't have any personal experiences with them -- if you do, please share your experiences in a comment below Thanks!

iWriter -- At the starting level, pays $2.43 for a 500-word article, which goes up to $3.01 if you get a "special request" (which sounds like the equivalent of a Textbroker direct order). There are three levels, and higher-level writers earn more.
site / apply

Writers Domain --Pays $3.00 to $3.30 for 200-250 word articles.
site / apply

More about writing for Interact Media

Interact Media, also known as the Zerys Content Marketplace, is a content broker, similar to Textbroker. Last month, I saw their ad on Craigslist, but didn't know anything else about them.

Today, I saw a discussion on the Demand Studios forums and learned that when you apply to Interact, you have to submit a 500-word sample that Interact keeps and publishes -- without paying for it.  That sounds very uncool. (Edited 11/30/12 to add: This is no longer the case. Interact now lets applicants use a previously published article as a sample, according to the comment from Beth Hrusch, Senior Editor at Interact, below.)

Aside from having to provide a freebie, which, of course, no one liked doing, opinions on the forum were mixed.  Some people thought there wasn't much work at Interact, and what there was, paid too little. Others were finding more work and thought it was worth it on a dollar-per-hour basis because the assignments were easy, and they could do them quickly.

One person said that most of the gigs paid less than a penny/word (ouch), topping out occasionally at 3 cents/word.  Several people said they made more by getting on clients' "favorite" lists and getting direct orders.

For me, having to give a freebie to get in the door is probably a dealbreaker. (Edited to add 11/30/12 -- Again, this has changed since I originally wrote this post, and Interact no longer requires writers to provide a freebie, according to the comment from a company editor below.)

Skyword gets $6 million investment

I just heard that Skyword, a company that produces content for brand-name companies, including Pampers, Bounty (paper towels), and Gather, announced today that Cox Media Group had invested 6 million dollars to "expand the Skyword platform to address new markets, and grow Skyword’s sales, marketing and client services functions." (That's from the company's press release.)

My take is this: The content site industry has two types of sites: (1) ad-supported open-platform sites, where companies create structured spaces where anyone can write articles about anything, and (2) broker sites, where companies bring together publishers and pre-screened writers and make money by taking a percentage of the writers' fees.


The open platforms are in trouble.  Google has been blasting at them for almost a year. Many have already shut down, and the others are struggling. The open-platform revenue-share model, in my opinion, is fading away.

Open-platform sites that encourage creativity and authenticity, and that set the bar high, with a genuine commitment to excellence, might be able to thrive, but most of the sites I've seen do the opposite -- setting "good enough" as the standard and applying assembly-line techniques to writing, turning articles into manufactured, predictable products -- inexpensive, but not really satisfying to a web-surfing public that can turn elsewhere at the click of a mouse.

The broker sites, though, seem to be doing well.  I haven't heard of any going out of business recently.  New broker sites are popping up, and some old ones are expanding. Textbroker, for example, recently opened a site for UK writers, adding that to its existing U.S., German, and French sites. And now, today, we hear that Skyword, another broker site, is going to expand.

I think for writers who want to work for content sites, the broker sites now provide the best opportunities.

Suite101 kicked out of Google News - and admits to gaming the system

Photo by BeeThalin

Many content sites have been kicked out of Google News, but usually they pretend to be shocked and/or they accuse Google of picking on them without cause.  This is the first time, that I know of, that someone at one of the sites has admitted that they didn't really care about the news they were producing.

"We began indexing articles in Google News in April 2010 as a purely SEO-driven initiative: the goals at the time were less to give reporters a platform or audiences a publication as to nab greater search traffic. With an English-language market well equipped with serious news organizations, to even think about competing you really have to mean it. As a group, we never really did."  -- Michael Kedda, Editor-in-chief, Suite 101, in a memo posted internally in Suite 101 for the site's authors 

That's quite an admission.  Full memo after the jump:

"We have received confirmation from Google that our news articles are no longer being included in the Google news index. While we don't know exactly why, and do know for some writers this is a shame, we're taking it in stride. Slightly bad timing if anything.

"We began indexing articles in Google News in April 2010 as a purely SEO-driven initiative: the goals at the time were less to give reporters a platform or audiences a publication as to nab greater search traffic. With an English-language market well equipped with serious news organizations, to even think about competing you really have to mean it. As a group, we never really did.

"Looking forward, we know that news journalism, as a form we respect, does not factor into our plans for future—at least not as something we produce ourselves. It's an easy, calm decision, unfortunately just slightly tainted by the apparent snub.

"Just as well. Time to focus.

"You will note that the submission guidelines have been amended to remove the section on news. We will also be removing the "newsworthy" check box from the article draft page.

"You are still welcome to publish articles on timely events, however we will not designate those articles as "news" in the articles' URLs.

Thanks,
Michael"

(via the AC, um Yahoo Voice, forums)

Et tu, WiseGeek?

WiseGeek -- the third content site to make a major announcement in the past two days -- announced it will stop publishing new content in January.  (Hat tip to Rena, again, and to the Demand Studios General Discussion Forum.)


I'll post more information when I have it.

I wonder why all these announcements from all of these sites are coming at the same time.  And on top of that, today is the one-year anniversary -- to the day -- that Helium abruptly announced it was scrapping its upfront payment system and substituting the first of its new, confusing systems that paid increasingly lower and lower rates.

Is there something significant about the first two days of December?  Are December 1 and 2 like the Ides of March for writers -- dates that hold a special significance and danger?   Beware, writers, of the onesies and twosies of the twelfth month?

Is it that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a good time for a news dump -- a time when people are paying less attention to the news -- a time similar to Friday evenings, the traditional time for politicians to make announcements they hope no one will hear?

Does it have something to do with the companies needing to get things done before the end of the fiscal year -- but not wanting to make a move RIGHT before Christmas, lest they be too easily painted as Scrooges?

It's a puzzle.

Bright Hub is going to stop paying revenue share

Starting December 15, Bright Hub will no longer pay revenue share on its articles.  (Hat tip, again, to Rena for the info).

I hate to say "I told you so" (okay, I lied -- I love to say "I told you so"), but people who write for revenue share, thinking it will fund their retirement, need to think again.   Check your contracts.  Most of the content-ste companies can stop paying revenue share at any time, for any reason -- and still keep your articles.  Or the companies may continue to pay, but secretly tinker with their secret formulas so that you will get a smaller percentage of the total income -- without ever knowing what happened. Then where will all your hard work have gotten you?

Excerpts from the memo the company sent to its contributors are after the jump:

... Like many companies we are facing the reality of a changed economy, while simultaneously working to increase visitors in a post-Panda world. This combination of market forces has required us to make some hard decisions about our business model moving forward, including the elimination of some internal staff positions as well as our ‘Shared Success’ writer program.

Therefore, our current writer and editor roles have ended, effective immediately, and your last payment for revenue-sharing will be on December 15. Any updates or editing of previously created content will be handled by internal staff. And, if we should ever need to delete one of your articles, we will return the article and copyright to you via email, utilizing our current article notification system.

Does this mean we are closing our virtual doors? No.

Bright Hub will continue to focus on our core content areas of Business, Technology and Education, and will be contracting on an ad hoc basis with a small group of writers and editors, who will work closely with our in-house editorial team. Fees for both writing assignments and editing work will be based on the length and depth of content coverage needed....

If you would like to be considered for future contract work, please send a note to support@brighthub.com . This is also the email you should direct any questions or concerns to about the changes we have outlined here...

We understand that for many of you, the time will have come to part ways....

"Associated Content" is now "Yahoo! Voices"

The "Associated Content" name and domain are gone, may they rest in peace.  All AC content was moved to the voices.yahoo.com domain, except for our profile pages, which are still at contributor.yahoo.com.

In case you haven't seen it, there's an official introductory memo that seems to explain everything.


I just glanced at it, and haven't really looked around the new site beyond the front page, which does look nice.

I probably won't be following much of the cheering or gnashing of teeth (whichever it may be) going on in the forums. I'm only peripherally involved in AC -- oops, Yahoo Voices -- now, and as long as I get my "metro beat" assignments, I'll be happy.  I'm also using AC -- oops, I did it again -- it's going to take me a while to get used to this -- I'm also using Yahoo Voices as a place to park my rants about TV and other things that don't have much commercial value (and don't fit into any of my existing blogs) but that I want to inflict on the world anyway.

The biggest change that I can see is that all articles will now be a single page.  That means less revenue share, and it also means that some existing articles will take a lot of scrolling to get through.  Going forward, I guess the basic strategy for writing for Yahoo Voices (ha -- I got it right that time) for people who want to maximize their revenue share is to break articles down and submit several short ones instead of a single long one.  This won't affect articles previously published on Yahoo ("regular" Yahoo), though, as those were always only a single page.

Maybe in the end it will work out for the best.  Without the content-farming stigma of the "Associated Content," name, maybe our articles will be seen in a more favorable light.  Not that anyone (least of all Google) would be fooled by a name change, but it could be a part of a new start.

Textbroker is opening a new site for UK English

Textbroker opened a new site today -- textbroker.co.uk -- for writing assignments in British, Canadian, and Australian English. Payment is in euros. (Hat tip to Rena for the info.)  You can find out more in the press release.

Editing to add: The new site is open only to writers outside the U.S. because of tax issues.

Interact/Zerys -- another article marketplace in the Textbroker and WriterAccess mode

I found this site (Interact Media, aka Zerys Content Marketplace) through a Craigslist ad.  It's another site, like Textbroker and WriterAccess, that brings together writers and clients for specific assignments -- some open to all writers, others direct assignments. It even uses the same two-to-five star rating system.

This is the ad. (They use the name Zerys on the ad, but Interact Media on the site itself -- I think Interact is the parent company):

The Zerys Content Marketplace is an award-winning content management platform developed for the purpose of bringing together content buyers and providers. We post thousands of jobs each week, and our client base is growing rapidly. We need experienced writers to join our network and become part of the content marketing revolution!

With our unique system, buyers use specialized set-up tools to create a list of titles they'd like to have written, along with writer instructions and other job details. Then, they can either post these titles to the writer job board, or assign them directly to you. When buyers order directly from you, they pay you the per-word rate you specify in your profile, or any rate you negotiate with them.

When you first apply, we will review a unique writing sample from you and give you an initial quality rating of 2-5 stars. After that, your rating will be based on buyer ratings. Buyers can search writers by quality ratings, so the higher your rating, the more likely you are to get higher paying jobs. 

During the application process, you will enter the pay rate you wish to charge per word for direct assignments. Payments are made every 2 weeks through your PayPal account. 

If you're interested in becoming a writer in the Zerys network, please apply here: 

http://admin.interactmedia.com/apply.aspx

Thank you!

Here's their writers' FAQ page.  Other than what I saw in the ad and on their site, I know nothing about this company.  Has anyone worked for them?  If so, what was it like?

Beware: Fake ad agency contacting self-hosted WordPress bloggers

I recently received an email from someone named Noa Morin at a company called the Kara Agency, saying she wanted to run a banner ad on one of my self-hosted WordPress blogs and asking me to quote a price.

She accepted the price right away, then said she wanted me to install a plug-in on my site that would display the ads. She said, after I asked, that the company advertising was Lacoste.

Long story short, this is a scam. Someone has been sending out the same emails under different "agency" names. The agencies are fakes.  Their websites are duplicate copies of another website, with just the agency name changed.  The original website, which all the others were copied from, may or may not be legit itself. The domain names for the duplicate websites were registered only days before email started being sent out under their names.

(more details after the jump)
First contact:

From: "Noa Morin" 〈nmorin@karaagency.com〉

Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Hi,

We are looking for new advertisement platforms and we are interested in your site www.-------.com.
Is it possible to place banner on your site on a fee basis?

Best regards,
Noa Morin

At this point, I thought it was probably a scam. Despite a recent spike in traffic, which I expected to be short-lived, my site had been semi-dormant for a long time, and its usual traffic patterns wouldn't justify someone contacting me out of the blue to ask about advertising.  The karaagency.com site was nicely designed, though, with a look that seemed creative enough to be a real site for an advertising agency. So I wasn't sure.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, as it probably wasn't a legit offer -- but responding just in case it was -- I replied, quoting a high weekly price. I got this response:

Hi!
Payments will be processed automatically every month, that's why we ask the price per month. There is no option in our billing system to make 1 week prepaid. Please offer your price per month

Best regards,
Noa Morin.
site: www.karaagency.com
e-mail: nmorin@karaagency.com
phone: + (0)9 78 62 31 00

This seemed odd and didn't make much sense. But still playing along and curious to see what they were up to, I responded with a monthly price which was much higher than the going rate (which I had just researched) for advertising on a site with traffic like mine. I figured in the unlikely chance that they were legit, they could make a lower counteroffer.  I got this response:

Hi!

Thanks for reply to our proposal!
We like your price.
To pass to the banner control system follow the link http://webmaster.karaagency.com
To enter use the following data:

login: ----------
password: -------------

You should install and activate the plugin in order to display advertisement. Before making payment, advertiser must approve location of the banner. The banner will be shown on your site when you add special code to your web- address (for example: http://www.-----------.com/?adv_test=1). It means, that visitors will see the banner only if it is approved and payment made.

To get installation instruction for your site type pass to: http://docs.karaagency.com/wp_install
To activate your site you have to enter the code: ----------

What way of payment is suitable for you?

This rang a lot of alarm bells. Why would they accept my (hugely inflated) price without even asking about my site traffic and visitor demographics? Why would they want me to install a plug-in?  Plug-ins can be dangerous -- they can take over the whole blog. In my limited experience with blog advertising, I just put javascript code in the sidebars.

I wrote back asking them what advertisements they would be showing, why she thought my blog's audience would be a good fit for their advertisers, and whether I could veto objectionable ads. I thought if they were scammers, they just wouldn't answer, but I did get this response:

Hi!
I represent Kara Agency. At the moment we are preparing an advertising campaign for Lacoste Company (it is a French company producing clothes, footwear, perfumery etc.)

Plugin installation doesn't mean that banner will appear on your site, it won't until payment is made. It is needed to let the advertiser check your site and decide if it fits his requirements.
If advertiser like your site, you receive payment and only after it, the banner will appear.

No, we don't ask you to change your URL.This test link is given you to see how the banner would look and where it would be placed.( but in fact it is not on your site, you can see in only when you add "?adv_test=1")

This was the first I had heard that the ad had to be approved by the advertiser -- I thought the agency had already accepted my offer. Also, my blog's audience is pretty geeky, and I couldn't imagine why someone representing a high-end designer clothing and perfume company would choose a geeky blog to run their ads.  No offense to geeks, but they (we) are not the first group that usually comes to mind when someone thinks about who is most likely to spend a lot of money on cutting-edge fashion. My blog readers, actually, almost never click on anything, not even on things I expect they would like. Ads for expensive perfume would not be a big hit.

I asked a friend who knows WordPress PHP coding to look at the plug-in (which I had downloaded, but NOT installed).  She said it looked okay, that it was just pulling ads off the agency's server.

Still, my gut was saying "Don't do it."

A web search for "Noa Morin" and "Kara Agency" showed a lot of identical comments left on blogs saying she wanted to run banner ads on their sites and that she was leaving a message in the comments because she couldn't find their contact information. The comments all ended, almost whimsically, with the line "P.S. Please delete this comment." Nothing else was showing up in my searches.

At that point, I decided to just drop it.  I was afraid there was a chance I was letting an opportunity slip away, which I would hate to pass up because I had been hoping to make some money with that particular blog for a long time.  The plug-in itself was apparently clean, and some people were urging me to go for it.  I had some doubts about my own reactions, wondering if I was being overly suspicious or even paranoid.  In the end, though, I decided to listen to my gut, and I figured that any money I might get (if the agency turned out to be legit) wouldn't be worth the stress of worrying about what the plug-in might be doing to my blog, which was a long-term labor of love.

About a week later, still curious, I did another Google search.  This time, someone had left comments on the blogs where Noa Morin had left comments with a link to his own site describing his experiences with the Noa Morin emails.  The link was a bit.ly link, which in itself raised questions, but after reading the page, I was convinced it was legit.

This blogger did two things that were very clever, which I wish I had thought of doing myself.  First, he looked at the karaagency's whois page.  The registration was privacy protected, which is very odd, I think, for a company. Individuals, yes, but companies, no. Also, the domain name had only been registered 10 days before the first email was sent. Second, the blogger called Lacoste, and they said they had never heard of the Kara Agency.

Some more web searching showed that other people had received the same emails sent under different names. Then, instead of searching on "Noa Morin" and "Kara Agency," I searched on "scam banner Lacoste" (without the quotation marks) which brought up a lot of new stuff, including Devious Scam Aimed at Bloggers, which gives a very good description of the whole experience, and Keep Safe on the Net, which has a lot of comments from people who have received the emails sent under various names.

It is 100% certain that this is a scam because the email senders change the name of the "agency" every few weeks, and the agency sites, under all the different names, are all clones of each other. No one though, that I am aware of, has yet figured out exactly how the scam works.  The consensus view is that the code in the plug-in is benign, and that the harm would probably come from the pictures or links in the ads that people would click on. Another possibility, this one rather diabolically clever, is that the scammers would introduce malicious code via plug-in updates.  Most people routinely accept all updates without even thinking about it, much less checking the update code.  The scammers could slip anything in that way. My guess is that they are trying to distribute spyware or other kinds of malicious code.

What I learned from this experience:

1.  Trust my gut.

2.  "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."  That old saying still applies.

3.  I'm not paranoid, I'm prudent.  (This time, anyway.)

4.  Never install a WordPress plug-in that doesn't come from the official WordPress site.

5.  Don't try to jump the gun.  My sites don't have enough traffic for pay-per-view advertising from large companies.  When and if they ever do, I can work through more normal channels.

6.  When "Noa" first contacted me, I became curious about how much I could reasonably charge direct advertisers. I found this article, which was helpful, and now I know: How much should I charge for my advertising space? (Problogger)