The majority of deadprogrammer.com traffic these days consists of myspace.com users hotlinking images. I really don't mind hotlinking, in fact, I encourage it, but the thing is myspacecadets never ever link back to me. It's common courtesy - if you use somebody's image as well as server resources, provide a link back.
Well, now I use this little snippet of code that in my .htaccess file to replace any hotlinked image from myspace.com with a tasteful ad for deadprogrammer.com:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.*\.)?myspace\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|png)$ photos/hotlinked.jpg [L]
All of a sudden, hundreds of popular myspacers are promoting me:

Classy. If you have a better idea for a replacement image, let me know.
Comments
This is just awesome :)
Dope. I just implemented your idea for my own site.
For now, I'm using your image, e.g. here -- http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=7569923 (see 5/28). :)
Awesome. The link does not work though.
Well, there's always goatse..
My approach:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000561.html
I don't think goatse would stand out enough on most myspace pages, and I don't think they would recognise Qbert :)
Hmm ... it does for me. Some kid named "tigertigger". Maybe you have to already be logged in.
Nono, the Q*bert image is what they were stealing! Here's what they get instead, now:
http://www.codinghorror.com/images/block.gif
He heh, it started working - I guess myspace had some sort of a server hickup. Nice :)
Ha! Nicely done!
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