I love a good scratch backin’

Are You In My Top Spots?

No I am not dyslexic!

You may have noticed a new widget on my right sidebar titled ‘Are You In My Top Spots’ It is from a new site, scratchback.com, that has launched this widget in beta version. The site is owned by Jim Kukral, long-time online marketing veteran, speaker, author, web entrepreneur, and blogger.

If you are lucky enough to have a version of Internet Explorer that works correctly, or smart enough to be using FireFox, then you can watch a video clip of Jim that I added to the top right ad slot.

The widget is a fancy schmacy tip jar that allows donors to get a link on my blog for giving me a tip. I liked its ease of use and the flexibility the user interface gave me to set it up. There were multiple templates to choose from and it let me control the number of links, the cost of the link, and the duration that the link is displayed for.

Currently I have the cost set to $1.00, which was the minimum. I created slots for 5 donors, and set the slots to auto-rotate. Meaning, that as a new one is added, one gets pushed down a level.

Problems I see:

1> Cost

scratchback.com takes 10% of the tip value during this beta period but has hinted that they will be taking a lot more than that when it officially launches. Somewhere between 40-50% was hinted at. That is too much and will make this new site sink quicker than the Titanic.

I will drop the program if it goes beyond 20%. And I think that amount would be too high but I will live with it. I mean if scratchback.com starts processing thousands of transactions per day 10% is more that fair. The site owner will still make a fortune…no need to get greedy.

2> No affiliate program

If the fee taken was 20% of the tip, with the site keeping 10% (or less) and distributing the remainder through an affiliate program, the higher fee would be easier to swallow. This would make the widget viral in nature and allow it to grow exponentially.

3> Google Eyes = Googleized

Call it what you want, but Google will probably attempt to bitch slap people using this widget. They will see it as buying links and you all know how pissed they get when you do that. We shall see.

Here I am promoting it and may be shooting myself in the foot with Adsense. Oh well I can’t let Google stop me from doing what I do. I know someday that I will probably be turfed by them as I do not see many top blogs running their ads.

Sucks to be them as there are many more options available to us blog folk!

Technorati Tags: Scratchback.com, Jim Kukral, blog tip jar, blog tips, buying top spot, buying links