The Destiny Online button exchange is still in it's infancy. However, we are trying to be more progressive and realistic about this button exchange:
1. Your exposure depends on how many other people & links there are in the exchange program.
Clickthrus are irrelevant -- participation is what makes this program work. Think: if LinkExchange says you have 300 exposures waiting, but there's 10,000 other people with 300 exposures waiting, and only 1 banner gets shown each time a participant's page gets loaded? Talk about sending a river through a garden hose. Our program is 1-for-1-for-1-for-1. Everyone shows a button (or 2 or 3, to keep the odds up), everyone's button gets shown, and everyone stays happy.
2. Showing the button is on the 'honors system'.
Like in #1, the number of people showing the buttons is more important than how many times your button gets shown. The more instances of a button that there are, the more exposures you get. Take the link code:
<a href="http://free.prohosting.com/~dahlsad/cgi-bin/banmat3.cgi?[SEE BELOW]+f=URL">
<img src="http://free.prohosting.com/~dahlsad/cgi-bin/banmat3.cgi?[SEE BELOW]+f=IMG" border=0 >
Substitute any unique string for [SEE BELOW] -- it must be unique from all other prople in the exchange as well, so use some username and some number for it.
Example: replace [SEE BELOW] with 'somebody001'
Make sure that "+f" follows the unique exposure ID. My rotator has 6 rotation sets in it, and "f" is the public one. You may change it, but you may end up showing non-exchange buttons, and for-profit buttons which make money for me! I wouldn't mind if you ran those, but you're better off staying in set "f".
Put as many buttons in as many places on your page as you like. Remember -- each instance of a button needs it's own unique ID in the [SEE BELOW] place.
You know what? You can use this code even if you don't have a button to exchange! Put this code in your page, help out the cause!
4. Sign up!
Soon there will be a fancy form here to sign up with. Until that time, just e-mail your button to the Button exchange, and include the URL that the button is supposed to link to. You have the code from above, so you can start using it right away. Your button & link will be evaluated (see below), and added within a few days.
You can get the statistics on your button at The statistics page. Just enter the e-mail address you used to submit your button, and your statistics (exposures, clicks, etc.) will be e-mailed to you.
5. Rules
The only rules apply to the members of the exchange. For content:no porn sites. I'll even take hacking/grey area sites. Contentless sites won't be included -- a link to a page full of revenue-generating banners will be ignored.
One final limitation: All buttons must be around 88x31. Some leeway is OK, but if you're getting to over 100 wide or tall, then you are too big.
From my end, I can tell if people aren't linking to the button exchange, but their buttons are in rotation still. This slows it down for us active participators. If it looks like there are more buttons than links, I will tour the participant's pages and remove the non-participating buttons. The honor system only works if we are all honorable, so please work within the system.
One technical note: Your own button may appear on your own page from time to time. Since the code for my banner exchange is simple, it just rotates the buttons, regardless of the destination. The more members we get, the less likely that will occur.
Thanks to CGI Scripts from the Crypt for the useful free banner rotator.
If you can run CGI scripts on your server, start your own banner exchange!
