ScratchBackThe Fun Way To Do Online Advertising

Seth’s post isn’t really about tip jars, but you get the point in terms of tipping?

If you like what you’re reading, click an ad to say thanks.

Pretty simple, but not an accepted online protocol, at least not yet.

If every time you read a blog post or bit of online content you enjoyed you clicked on an ad to say thanks, the economics of the web would change immediately. You don’t have to buy anything (though it’s fine if you do). You just have to honor the writer by giving them a click.

You still get what you pay for, even if you pay with attention.

Yep, it’s pretty simple, and you’re right Seth, people want to give back, especially on blogs. That’s why Scratchback works and has thousands of people using it and more every day.

Duncan from Techcrunch wrote a nice piece today about the Scratchback Beta. So far our system and server at Rackspace are holding strong against their 600k rss subscribers.

New comer ScratchBack, led by well regarded online marketer Jim Kukral, offers an online “tipping” system. It allows a publisher to accept tips and “give back” links or images in return. Each listing has a unique message; when a visitor mouseovers a listing, a custom message shows up in the form of a bubbletip. Publishers name their price on tips, and earn money from every interaction through the ScratchBack system. The service is free to signup, and publishers get the code for a “TopSpot” widget in minutes.

From the faq…

Do My Links Pass Page Rank?
They do not. Every single link, including the link back to Scratchback, in the TopSpot widget has a “nofollow” hard encoded in them. The code is delivered in Javascript format as well. That means that Google and other search engine spiders “won’t follow” the link. I doesn’t mean your link isn’t clickable, it is.

You cannot remove that code, nor should you attempt to as per the user agreement every publisher and advertiser agree to upon registration. Google has made it perfectly clear that “selling page rank” is not something they believe in. We don’t believe in it either. This system is built for fun. There are plenty of other solutions out there you can use if you want to “pass Google juice”, just not this one. Did you hear that Google?

Will Google Penalize Me For Using This?
Nope. See above.

Can I Have A TopSpot Widget & Google Adsense On The Same Page?
Yes. TopSpots are not contextual in any way and do not conflict with Google’s terms.