After all the commotion with PageRank it looks like Jim Kukral has stepped into the breach to save the day. ScratchBack is a widget you can put on your site or blog and it allows your visitors to leave you a tip in return for a linkback.
Nofollow
Now before you get all excited the links are nofollow links to comply with Googles law on selling links. To be extra sure Jim is calling this a tipping service just incase Google gets the wrong idea even though google has stated that you can sell text links as long as you use a nofollow or Javascript so as the GoogleBot does not follow the link.
Is this the first of many such services
ScratchBack has only just gone live beta and it already seems to be popular, several bloggers are already using the system. It’s interesting to see that links are actually being sold through this, there was concern that nofollow links would not entice link buyers.
I think the combination of the posing the link selling as a fun tipping system and the fact that many webmasters have not realised the links are nofollow have contributed to its popularity.
I myself was thinking of trying out ScratchBack on TextAdSearch but the widget doesn’t fit in my navigation bar (it’s 200 pixels wide) and I am still determined to go the route of using OpenAds. I have started to use it on this blog for banners but I find text links are harder to get working properly (I think it’s just me though).
Free advertising online , post free classifieds