I just got the following email from a "Joe Wander" (joe_1der@hotmail.com)

Hello There,

I hope this email finds you well. My name is Joseph Wander and I am an Advertising Coordinator for an Internet Company. I am currently working on increasing our products and services presence on the internet. I came across your site and found it to be very useful. I am very much interested in advertising my product on www.interglobal.org/weblog/ and any others that may be part of your network.

We can pay you $20/month for 2 static text links or if you already have your media kit or advertising rates I will appreciate it if you can send it to me. Thank you again and I hope to hear from you soon.

Best Wishes,
Joseph Wander

It's clear that he hasn't actually visited my site. At least there's nothing in the email to indicate that--it reads like a form letter. Note that it doesn't address me by name. Also note that the email address is hotmail.

Any other bloggers out there gotten one of these, and do you have any idea what the deal (or catch) is? I'm hesitant to reply, because it may just be confirming my email address to a spamlist.

When in doubt,nuke them.

http://www.mailwasher.net/

They probably used a spider to grab your email address and then stick it in a form letter. If you reply, it's almost certain you'll be on their list of working email addresses forever.

If bloggers could make $10/month/"static text link," we'd all be living in places like than one on Grand Cayman that Glenn pointed to this morning. ;)

Get yourself your own hotmail address and send him a letter. If you get no reply, you'll know it was spam.
Nice thing about a hotmail address is that if you don't sign in for a month, it deactivates and starts bouncing mail. But you can reactivate it for 6 months (if you want to use it to sign up for something else).
I reactivate mine once in a while for newspaper 'registrations' and such.