I have to say that I'm rarely impressed by new ideas in website monetization, but Linkbucks, as a concept, is fairly revolutionary. The idea is that Linkbucks will display ads on the websites and pages you link to - check out their site for more.
They answered a few of my initial questions on the homepage:
Currently we pay you $1 US for every 5000 top banner ad impressions, and $1 US for every 3500 intermission ad impressions.
This tells me there's the option to display a banner on the page you link to, or the option to use interstitial-style pages, which pay out more (but are undoubtedly more annoying for users).
The problems are inherent - your users are suffering through additional advertising for using your site as a reference point. However, some might claim that it's better than showing ads on your own site, and I have little doubt that there are some fairly spammy ways to abuse this network (I note that the site already only counts clicks from certain countries).
If anyone's given this service a shot and has experience, I'd be thrilled to hear your take.
Linkbucks offers two methods to get paid for visitors navigating away from your site. The first one was mentioned above and it employs banner ads, while the second uses interstitial pages (you know, the pages featuring an image ad and a link that says click here to continue to the destination page). Linkbucks indicates they pay $1 for 5000 banner impression and $1 for every 3500 interstitial impressions.
While the idea of getting paid for outbound links without having to sell them isn’t a bad one, the service seems to be a prime candidate for spam abuse. I’m curious as to how Linkbucks addresses this potential issue. Speculative pitfalls aside, would you consider using this service? If so, why? If not, what causes you to abstain? Also, if there are any Linkbucks members out there, let us know what you think of their service.
