Rules

A bidder is a link or an @name handle — @you or yoursite.com/launch. That normalized identity is who you are for the day, and everything you pay under it adds up on one line.

Normalization decides identity, so it is strict about the things that are cosmetic: @Name and @name are the same bidder, www. is stripped, trailing slashes are stripped, http becomes https, and tracking parameters are dropped from the link we publish. A path is part of your identity — yoursite.com and yoursite.com/pricing are two different bidders. Query strings and fragments are not: they ride along on the link but never split your line in two. A profile link and its handle are the same bidder, so you cannot hold two rows for one account.

Rank is cumulative. You are not bidding against a price, you are topping up a total, and you only ever pay the difference. Sitting at $12 and want to be at $30? You pay $18. Nothing is ever refunded to move you down.

The minimum for any single payment is $2, and every payment is a whole multiple of $1 — no odd cents, so every number on the board stays readable. Ties are broken by who got there first: if two bidders hold the same total, the earlier one ranks higher.

You cannot leap to a number nobody can answer. Whatever the leader holds, the highest total anyone may reach with a single payment is:

cap = max(leader × 2, leader + $10)

Two terms, and the bigger one wins. The 2× term is what matters once the board is expensive. The flat $10 floor exists for the other end of the day: without it, a board sitting at $2 would take dozens of sequential bids to reach real money, and nobody has the patience. The floor lets the first hour escalate in a few moves, then stops mattering.

When you are already at the cap you simply cannot bid. Wait for someone else to move the leader and the ceiling rises with them.

Matching the leader is not passing them. To take #1 you have to land at least $1 above them: with the leader on $50, the first total that claims the top is $51. Anything between the two is rejected before you pay, not after.

You cannot outbid yourself. While you are #1 your bidder is frozen out — someone else has to overtake you before you can pay again. Nobody gets to bid against their own ghost to inflate the board.

You cannot bid twice in 60 seconds. Every bidder waits out a cooldown between checkouts. It keeps the last minutes readable instead of a script fight.

The board closes at 16:00 UTC, every day.

Anti-snipe. Any payment confirmed in the last 180 seconds pushes the close out to 180 seconds after that payment. It repeats without limit: pay with 45 seconds left and the close moves to 180 seconds from then; if someone answers with 12 seconds left, it moves again. The day ends only after 180 seconds of silence, so nothing is ever won in the last breath by being fast rather than by paying more.

At the close the board freezes exactly as it stands and becomes a permanent archive page — the ranks, the amounts and the links stay online, and stay clickable. A fresh empty board opens the same instant, at $0, with everyone back to nothing. Nothing carries over. Yesterday buys you no advantage today.

Be honest about this: the self-outbid ban and the cooldown are attached to your identity, and an identity costs a domain. Anyone determined enough can bid with two different URLs and effectively outbid themselves, or fight through the cooldown with a second link.

That is fine. You pay twice. Both listings are real, both are live, both link somewhere, and both amounts are counted. The rules exist to keep the board readable, not to police intent — there is no version of this where someone gets to the top without paying for it.

Every confirmed payment always produces a visible listing: a clickable link on the board, a live click counter, and a permanent line in that day's archive. That is the promise. The single exception is moderation, below.

If your bid is stale by the time it confirms — someone paid while you were on the checkout page — you are placed at whatever rank your amount earns. Never rejected, never silently dropped, never held. Staleness can only cost you rank, never your listing.

If your payment confirms after the close, it still counts for the board you started it on, for up to 5 minutes. Past that it lands on the board that is open when it arrives. Your money is never dropped on the floor.

Listings are auto-accepted and moderated after the fact. Nothing waits for approval — the board is live in seconds — and everything is reviewed afterwards.

Illegal content, malware, phishing, scams and adult content are removed and refunded. A removed listing disappears from the live board and from the archive, and its link stops working. Refunds are handled by hand, so allow a day — and mail us rather than opening a dispute, it is faster.