Startup Review: Spottt – Free Link Exchange
Part of working for an internet startup company means that I sometimes get inundated with beta invitations to all kinds of new things. Right now, I’m trying out about 4 or 5 different websites / companies. When I look at them, I always think of a few questions: How does this solve a new problem? How can they make money? Will I use it?
Today’s site is Spottt. Spottt’s tagline is “Free Link Exchange”
The concept is simple:
- Tell us your website and pick a category
- Upload an image (125X125)
- Put some code on your site
- We’ll show others ads on your site, yours will show on theirs. For every 2 impressions you give, your ad will give 1 impression on somebody else’s site. The stats show real time impressions, clicks, and credits.
To me, it sounds a lot like bannerexchange from the early 1990’s – only now we’re doing buttons not banners.
Will it be popular? Probably – everybody is always looking for ways to drive traffic and get links, and 125X125 isn’t much room to give up to do so…. but what’s the path to monetization?
Also, who the hell wrote their HTML code that they provide?
It takes all this code:
<style> table.spottt_tb, table.spottt_tb tr, table.spottt_tb td, table.spottt_tb a, table.spottt_tb tr a img { margin:0; padding:0; border:none; background:none; position:static; text-decoration:none; display:block; width:125px; vertical-align:top;} .spottt_thumb, .spottt_thumb img, .spottt_thumb a, .spottt_thumb td { height:125px; } .spottt_label, .spottt_label img, .spottt_label a, .spottt_label td { height:21px;}</style>
<table cellspacing=”0px” class=”spottt_tb” id=”sp_code_table_a7orqp69wwg8cock”><tr class=”spottt_thumb”><td><a href=”http://click.spottt.com/sp_click_a7orqp69wwg8cock.php”><img src=”http://view.spottt.com/sp_image_a7orqp69wwg8cock.jpg” border=”0″/></a></td></tr><tr class=”spottt_label”><td><a href=”http://home.spottt.com/sp_index_a7orqp69wwg8cock.php” ><img src=”http://view.spottt.com/sp_label_a7orqp69wwg8cock.jpg” border=”0″/></a></td></tr></table>
To make this:
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They’re using tables for layout still, and they’re putting the styles right in there instead of linking to an external style sheet.
It’s just a mess. What do you guys think?
3 comments February 13th, 2008
