Were having a design contest for a new TopSpot widget design.

We’ll refrain from making any comments on entries as they come in, but you can feel free to leave your comments below if you wish. Remember, all entries will be collected and presented together after the deadline has passed, and you will be able to vote for the winner at that time.

Sent in by http://bethei.blogspot.com/.

Yesterday we mentioned we were having a design contest for a new TopSpot widget design. Today we have our first entry. Check it out. Below.

We’ll refrain from making any comments on entries as they come in, but you can feel free to leave your comments below if you wish. Remember, all entries will be collected and presented together after the deadline has passed, and you will be able to vote for the winner at that time.

Sent in by http://www.wakeuplater.com/.

We’re going to begin featuring some of our users who are offering some amazing tipping opportunities for your exposure. If you want to get featured, just send an email to info @ scratchback dotcom and give us your blog url, your daily reader count, and how much your tips cost. We’ll try to feature you on this blog.

Today let’s talk about a new SB user at http://bloggingexperiment.com/. You can read their post about ScratchBack here.

Tip Cost: $30
Length: 30-Day link
Blog RSS subscriber count: 500

Looks like a great deal to us! Head on over and tip away!

More About The Site…

Hi, I’m Ben Cook and I’m the one behind the Blogging Experiment. In fact, that’s my wife and I in the picture to the right. Usually in these about pages people tell you why they’re an expert, and why you should listen to them. Here’s the thing though, I’m not some sort of internet whiz or mogul or anything like that. I’m a 23 year old husband who’s grown up on the internet. In fact, other than my roughly 3 years of search marketing experience, there’s really no reason you should listen to me. Luckily for me, that’s not really the point. The purpose of this site is really quite simple. I’m trying to get this site to generate a full time income starting from scratch. However, the true over arching goal is to be as transparent as possible, documenting every step I take, to the point that anyone, and I mean anyone can duplicate my success (or perhaps my failure). That way, the results will speak for themselves. If I achieve the goal, well then maybe I’ll be worth listening to. If not, maybe you can learn from the mistakes I’m bound to make. I’ve given myself a year to achieve the goal and you’re more than welcome to join me for the ride. Whether I make it or not, I promise it will be an interesting time.

Widget Design Contest Now At Sitepoint, Click Here!

Well, can you? If you think you can, then you should enter the ScratchBack TopSpot widget design contest. All you have to do is design a new ScratchBack widget using the requirements below, then submit it to us, and we’ll let our users vote on the winner.

And here’s the best part. The winner gets $200 in cash straight outta our PayPal account.

Ready to submit your design? Read below.

Official Contest Rules

Widget Design Contest Now At Sitepoint, Click Here!

1. Have fun and be creative!
2. Grab the psd file from this page
3. Size must be same as existing widget (200px wide), guides on the .psd file
4. Middle content area must remain white background
5. Widget must contain 3 parts (top piece and two bottoms graphics)
6. All graphics you use (if you use them) must be royalty-free
7. Color doesn’t matter, get creative!
8. Text on widget can be modified, but should keep similar theme
9. Design must be generic enough that all ScratchBack users can use (no personal information)

That’s about it. Just modify the file here and send it back to us. We’ll take all the entries and post them up for our users to vote on. Entries will be posted as we get them, and voting will begin at the end of January 2008.

Note: The deadline to send in your submission is January 30, 2008.

Winner will be notified via email and will be chosen by readers of this blog by a web voting mechanism.

C’mon, send in those entries! Need some inspiration? There are a few custom designs on this page at the bottom.

I would also encourage any of our current custom users who have made a custom design to leave a comment here with your URL so people can see your designs. There’s over a few hundred of them out there, so let’s share.

Here’s another article about bloggers who are making some money from their efforts. The point is…

You’re not alone. Many, in fact, the majority, of bloggers don’t make a ton of cash from blogging. But there is hope, as this article suggests.

We built ScratchBack as one of those alternatives that can help you earn a few extra bucks. Is it working for you? Please leave a comment if it is.

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.

Yep, the headline you’re reading above is our new tagline. What do you think? Zesty enough? Fun enough? Dumb-enough? We’re ok with 2 out of 3.

Let us know what you think? We love feedback.

Here it is again…

ScratchBack - A Fancy-Schmancy Tip Jar For Your Blog - Fun & Easy

We just threw up (ok, not like barfing… we put up) the latest version of the new ScratchBack home page design. What do you think? We’re going for a softer, easier to read, less techy, built for everyone type of look and feel. How’d we do? Did we hit all of the most important points quickly?

Click here to view the homepage. Then come back and give your feedback?

Shawn Collins, a ScratchBack user over at the Affiliate Tip Blog, wrote to me to tell me that a few days ago he installed the WP Stats Wordpress plugin and realized that it was tracking outbound links from his ScratchBack TopSpot widget.

I installed the WordPress stats plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/ ) a couple days ago and I just noticed that it tracks outbound links from SB. It was baffling me that I saw a bunch of URLs I didn’t recognize or remember including in posts that were showing in the top ten links clicked in my blog.

Great that I can see that info. People are getting a good bang for their buck. http://momscashblog.com/ had 5 clicks yesterday and 3 so far today from me – and they’re in the #8 slot on my widget. Not bad for $1.

Indeed. Thanks Shawn. If you use Wordpress, it might be a good time to install the WP Stats widget, and keep track of how many people are clicking on your widget links.

You should know as well, that one of ScratchBack’s future enhancements is built-in tracking.

The two big updates we will have rolling out after the first of the year are going to be smaller widget widths and personalize tipping “buy” pages.

Small widget sizes - Right now the only size available is 200 pixels wide, which seems to work for a lot of people, but also does not work for many blog designs. So we’re working on some smaller widgets. Right now the plan is to make them about 160 pixels wide in size, based upon our research and feedback from our users.

Do you have some feedback you’d like to share about sizes? What size do you need? Let us know in the comments.

Customized tipping “buy” pages - This means that when someone goes to tip you, and click on your tip link (example), you will now be able to add a custom message to that page, as well as an image. For example:

“My blog is all about television and celebrities. For only $5.00, you can tip me and get a nice little promotional link back on my site. Thanks for visiting www.sitename.com”

You’ll also be able to add an image to the page. More like a banner where you could up a special offer, or tip cost, or whatever you want!

As always, we appreciate your feedback during our beta. Feel free to leave a comment below, we’re listening!