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Cleverly named, ScratchBack is an interesting concept.
I first noticed the ScratchBack widget on DazzlinDonna’s blog. For $5 you can have a (no follow) ad link on her blog. The ad is placed at the top of the list, and as other advertisers join, the link drops, until it has dropped off the list of 15 ad links. I added the Diva to it (pretty cheap advertising) and will be watching to see if it brings me any traffic.
If you’re in a very niche market this may be a clever and inexpensive way to advertise your products within the niche itself. Go check out the directory and find a blog or two that are in your niche that you can get an inexpensive link on. For the price it’s certainly worth a try. This is a fairly new program, so the directory isn’t filled with a lot of bloggers just yet, but I can see it becoming popular. The links are no-follow, which doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t get any link juice, but do it more for the traffic than any thing else.
If you want a widget for your blog, you can choose a pre-designed widget or customize your own. You can also pre-approve advertisers before they’re added to your widget, or let the system add them automatically. Once you’ve signed up for the widget, you can add your site to the ScratchBack Directory for advertisers to find you.
I added the ScratchBack widget to my blog just for the heck of it, so if you feel like spending 5 bucks you can have a text link on SEO Diva. Just think of the cachet that will bring you!
Popularity: 28% [?]
15 Comments
Nice cheap advertising if anything. Thanks for the tips. You’re always on top of things.
Hi frd,
The 2nd link of the post on “DazzlinDonna’s blog” is not working frd… u need to check it out
and its a unique advertising method on a good traffic site with good PR too and yes its nofollow link but can bring good traffic if our title attracts visitors.
@ Amy - you’re welcome!
@ Puneet - thanks for letting me know - I went right in and fixed it. I agree that ,set up properly, ads like this could bring some good site traffic.
Thanks for the tips, It’s inspired me blogging
bule gila - It’s great to be able to inspire people!
Great blog. I wanted to know if you wouldn’t mind posting an article on my site linking back to this blog. My visitors would benefit greatly from reading some of the stuff here. i will definitely be visiting more often now that i found you guys!
Great concept indeed.
I was about to say wouldn’t google penalize people big time for selling links like that, but then I realized you said no follow, not do follow.
It’s a good idea but would the lack of exposure time would pose a problem on really popular blogs where it’d disappear quickly.
Jorge - I’ll put it in my list of things to do. Glad you found my blog!
Warhammer Online - thanks for your comment.
JBourne - It’s actually a flash widget, so the links don’t show up, but it could be a good traffic builder.
I figure that even if it doesn’t last on a really popular blog, it should get some excellent exposure while it’s there (I hope).
I think this is a pretty cool idea, but the more popular the blog is, the less practical it becomes (for those buying the slots). If 20 people/day want a slot, something’s got to give.
On the other hand, if it is a popular blog, even less that a day of exposure could be worth $5.
It’s must better to use scratchback and advertise your links. The simple reason is Google - as it won’t punish any participants for exchanging or selling / buying textlinks. Scratchback maker took care of this by making it NOFOLLOW… that’s very good move I think.
Do you get to see how much traffic these sites have? It is cheap, but if only a few people see the link then it is not worth a lot.
@Chadwyck - so far, for $5 on a pretty popular blog, I’ve stayed in the top spot for a couple of weeks and netted 18 new visitors.
@New Zealand - no, but I picked a blog that I like and that I know gets good traffic and the type of visitors I want to visit my blog. You can use Compete to get a pretty accurate idea of traffic on a site.
@Eduardo - sorry, your comment got caught in the spam filter. Scratchback is such an absolutely cheap way to buy links for traffic, and you’re right - no punishment from Google!
Thanks, I am new to backlinking and all this SEO stuff and am trying to learn because I have only been backlinking for about 3 weeks with great results. I don’t quite follow you and will try to figure it out. If you have any easier ABC instructions for a novice I would appreciate it until I become accustomed to your lingo. Thanks so much.