PiXELWiT

I signed up for the ScratchBack TopSpots program a while back to see what it was all about and this is what I learned.

ScratchBack Service Summary: The TopSpots widget provides a place for your site’s visitors to easily publish their links in exchange for “tips” that they leave in your PayPal account. You can read the ScratchBack FAQ for more detailed information. Of course this simple out-of-the-box functionality comes at a price but fortunately ScratchBack is only charging a very reasonable10% commission for all tips generated through its service. This percentage will increase once the program leaves the Beta testing stage but hopefully they won’t go overboard.

My ScratchBack Experience: Nearly all information regarding setup and installation is easy to follow and find. I only encountered one stumbling block but unfortunately it was a rather large one. All of the standard design choices seemed to clash with the colors of my site and using the Custom Widget Design service didn’t really get me where I wanted to be.

Here is where I wanted to go…

and this is where I ended up…

My greatest concern with the custom design is that the center background color is white rather than olive. Apparently the white background is hard-coded into the ScratchBack widget’s script and it cannot be changed. This may be fine for most people but that great big field of bright white just didn’t fit in with the other muted colors used in my sidebar so it had to go. In other words, I ditched the entire ScratchBack TopSpots service because of the way it looks. I feel so judgemental.

Hopefully later versions of the ScratchBack widget will better facilitate personalization and customization. I think I’ll wait until then.

Comments(0)