ScratchBackThe Fun Way To Do Online Advertising

Visit http://www.shankrila.com/ for a really good deal on a tip. It’s only $2 for a tip, and they claim to have 20k+ monthly visitors and 400 or so RSS subscribers. It’s like a tech blog with a “life” twist.

ShanKri-la is a humble attempt to disperse information about technology that can make our lives a little bit easier, a little bit enjoyable and a little bit more manageable. We live in a world where our daily lives are a blur. Monday starts with a dizzying speed and before we realize it’s the weekend and you take a moment’s break and Monday is looming at you again even before you woke up from that Sunday night’s sleep that you were yearning for all week!

Sphinn this story please?

Well, the cat is out of the bag. We hinted the other day that a big blog network was adopting ScratchBack. We can say it now, it’s Splashpress Media. Check out the announcement here on David’s blog (he runs their marketing).

One of the advertising systems I have enjoyed here on this blog is Scratchback. It is a system that allows readers to tip the blogger and show their link on the blog. The great thing about the system is that links are done using JavaScript which means they shouldn’t create any issues with Google like other text link systems. The other great thing is that the blogger sets the price and time.

I have used the system on this blog for a while, selling ten dollar links, but Splashpress’ prices are insane. If you want to get links on The Blog Herald, Blogging Pro or other blogs in the Splashpress Media family, here is your chance.

So head on over to some of their blogs and enjoy a super low-cost way to advertise on their huge traffic. I believe most of the widgets they put up are set to only a $5.00 tip.

Here’s a few blogs that have it going already. Go tip!

http://www.blogherald.com
http://www.bloggingpro.com
http://www.blogsearchengine.com/
http://www.901am.com/
http://www.gadzooki.com/

We’re not going to say who it is just yet, but we wanted to announce that a blog network has begun testing of the ScratchBack system across their blogs. The widgets we made for them are custom designed to match each blogs’ color. We’re pretty excited about it.

Hopefully we’ll get permission from the network to talk about it down the road when we have more data. Till then, keep your eyes out for widgets in new places you may not have seen them before. We’re taking the online tipping space by storm!

Check out our newest widget user over at http://timothysykes.com. He’s using a very swanky custom designed widget that is set for $20/tip, on auto-bump. His blog gets over 3,000 unique visitors a day, so that’s a pretty great deal if you ask us. Go tip him!

Want to know more about his audience? Check his advertising page.

Here are some demographics of interest (tracked with Google Analytics and surveys):
- 40% of readers are between 18-25 years
- 36% of readers are between 26-35 years
- 20% are over 36 years
- Avg. time on site: 8 minutes and 30 seconds
- Traffic Sources: 52% Direct Traffic, 38% Referring Sites, 10% Search Engines
- Location of visitors: USA 81%, Canada 7%, UK 4%, Germany 3%, others 5%

We use PayPal as the exclusive payment processor for all ScratchBack tips. Here’s why.

#1 - 140 Million PayPal Users Can’t Be Wrong?
Yep, there are 140 million people with PayPal accounts.

#2 - Tips Are Easier To Give With PayPal
Think about it. Most of our users are pricing their tips at $10 and below. If you’re a reader of a blog, would you whip out your credit card to tip somebody a few bucks? Or… is it easier to simply login to PayPal, click two more times, and be done?

#3 - PayPal Money Is Like “Funny Money”
Stats have shown that PayPal users treat their PayPal funds as “fun money”. In other words, it’s just money that is not real to them. So they’re more likely to tip a person with that fun money.

#4 - ScratchBack Is All About Fun
Hey, ScratchBack is built for fun, so using a payment system that promotes “funny money” makes a lot of sense, eh?

Yes, there could/should be a better way to do it, but nobody has built it yet.

We’ve been conducting a little experiment over the past month or so. We wanted to see how/if tipping ScratchBack users with a direct link to an affiliate site would drive conversions and sales for a product. So here’s what we did.

Over the past month, we’ve tipped close to $200 across a few hundred ScratchBack widgets all together. Some were $1.00, some were more, and we didn’t care what type of site of blog it was we tipped. Tip: Using the ScratchBack directory is a good place to look for blogs to tip.

The site we promoted was www.buytheflip.com, which has affiliate links on it to Buy.com. The payout from Buy.com is 3% of a sale, and the typical purchase price of a Flip camera is about $150. So selling one camera earns about $4.50 in commission.

So in return for our tips, we put up links that looked like this example image below. You can see one live here.

Did it work? Yes! Here’s how the numbers crunched for us.

Tips given to promote affiliate site = $200
Sales of product through Buy.com = 62
Commission earned for sales = $279
Profit = $79

Essentially, this proves that you can use ScratchBack to drive affiliate sales, if you’re smart about it.

We’re seeing a LOT of people doing this, promoting all kinds of offers like ebooks and mastermind courses. Give it a try. Try the directory to find some good places to tip!

Are you experiencing the same kind of luck we had? Contact us because we’d love to feature your story!

We just had our billing team push the PayPal “send” button on our very first ever round of payments for tips generated by users using the ScratchBack widgets. Wahoo!!! Enjoy that early Christmas tip bonus everyone!

Every user who generated over $10 in tips was paid today. And we’re still in beta! Who else pays in beta???

Here’s hoping to pay even more in January! Did you get paid today? Go ahead and leave a comment if so, we’d love to hear how you felt when that money rolled into your PayPal account.

A few weeks late, but here are some fun holiday themed widgets you can use to generate more tips. You see one of them in action to the right here on the ScratchBack blog.

VERY easy to update. Just login and go to your “widget manager” and update the widget. Remember, you DO NOT HAVE TO RECOPY YOUR CODE! Just update the widget, click next and the design will automatically switch.

Change back anytime you wish.

Sometime in the first week of Dec, 2007, we’ll be sending out the very first round of payments to qualifying ScratchBack publishers. Qualifying, according to the terms, means that you’ve earned $25 in tips in your account.

But wait, this time we’re going to lower that $25 threshold to $10 for this first month of payments (maybe longer).

So any beta publisher who has earned at least $10 in tips will get paid in December via PayPal.

Time to login and check to see how much you’ve earned in tips. If you haven’t reached the $10 level, make a push on your site or blog so you can get paid!

Another great series of tips from DigitalKeyto.info, this time about how to make money by tipping people who use the ScratchBack widget.

Remember, you can add your site to this post so people can find it to advertise on, or browse the comments on this post for sites to tip. We will have a directory coming soon so this will be much easier.

1. Advertise your site!

There are many good deals right now since it is new. Find a site with some traffic that still has a low ScratchBack price. If the site is set to bump, you could have a link to your site for several weeks. The trick is finding a site with traffic. Manuel Viloria was the first blogger to buy a link here to his blog.

2. Advertise your spammy site.

Actually, my first advertiser with ScratchBack was a bit on the spammy side. It is a link to a page of different home-based businesses labeled Top Work At Home. While I would not want a full link to a site like this, it is no different than an AdSense ad for a home-based-business. If you have some type of site that would normally not be indexed by Google, this is a good option for getting traffic. Always check with the owner of the page first since they may not approve your link if they do not like it and you will be out your tip.

3. Advertise a product.

Almost like the previous way to make money online with ScratchBack, this is another case where you would not normally get a link from a website or blogger. Jim Kukral (who is behind this whole ScratchBack thing) is the first one I saw using this. Think of it as running an AdWords campaign without a CPC. Jim used a link ad here to send readers to a site selling a cool flip digital video camera that plugs right into your USB port to send the video to your computer.

4. Set up a business creating ScratchBack graphics for advertisers.

Similar to method number 5 of making money online with ScratchBack on your site. In this case set up a page with fees and some design ideas for designing graphics for others who need buttons to advertise on ScratchBack. Yep, you need a little know how and software, but it could be handy. You may be able to work out a deal for a discounted ad with sites using ScratchBack with images. It will help them get more advertisers too. I may start to do this myself.