See Spottt fetch more visitors

To bring more visitors to my blog, I looked for a service to help give my page more exposure. I wanted something that could be both easy to use, and affordable. I found Spottt! Spottt is the latest invention of Phil Kaplan, the founder of Adbrite and earlier of F***edcompany.com.

What I really love is that it's wonderfully straight-forward: It lets sites exchange ads, to boost each other’s traffic (you help me, I help you, what could be better?). Publishers provide an ad for another site, in return for accepting an ad from the other site. Spottt does this for free, but later on will presumably take a cut. Spottt is promising because most sites have ad space that can go empty for periods of time, after an advertising campaign ends, for example.

The idea first arose in 1996, when Tony Hsieh launched a company called Link Exchange, which i'm sure most of you have heard of by now. By its first year, 30,000 Web sites were using it. A million were using it in 1998, when Microsoft bought it for $250 million. However, Microsoft shut it down this year, Hsieh tells us. This is consternating, given the tens of millions of blogs that could use this service. Kaplan has recruited Hsieh as an advisor for the new effort.

The ads are of 125×125 pixel size, and must run “above the fold.” Sites apply for admission to Spottt, and choose a category. Then one shoe retail site can exchange ads with a shoe repair site, for example. Right from the moment you submit your site, Spottt is easy to use. Free...easy to use....and brings visitors to your webpage... really can't get much better then that!