Looking for a new and easy way to monetize your blog without having Google flush your page rank down the toilet?

Enter Scratchback. The concept is simple enough; a blogger or advertiser visits your site and wants to place an ad (which Scratchback calls a tip). The click on your Scratchback widget and it displays the “tip” cost. The advertisers places their ad and you get paid.

Some of the benefits of Scratchback:

• Accept “tips” from your readers easily & quickly

• Offer text links* or banners, your choice

• Set your own price of your TopSpots

• Give readers a fun way to participate beyond commenting

The good news is that you can do all of this without getting hammered by google. According to the Scratchback 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.

A Great Strategy for Scratchback
I am currently working on a Wordpress plugin that will allow you to display a custom sidebar depending on what page is showing.

If you combine this with the popular popularity plugin for Wordpress, you will be able to set your Scratchback tip price based on the popularity of each page!