Rules
There is one rule, and it is money. Everything below is a consequence of it.
How rank is decided
Listings are sorted by lifetime dollars paid, highest first. Nothing else counts. Not votes, not clicks, not quality, not how long you have been here.
If two listings have paid exactly the same amount, the one that paid first sits higher. Getting there earlier is the only tiebreaker.
Rank is never stored. It is recalculated from the payment totals every time a board is drawn, so it is always the true current order.
The 99-cent bid
Every payment on this site is a whole number of 99-cent bids. The minimum is one bid, $0.99. Six bids is $5.94. There is no other denomination.
This keeps the arithmetic closed: because every total is a multiple of 99 cents, the price to beat any listing is also a multiple of 99 cents. If you type an amount that is not a whole number of bids, it rounds up to the next one, and the exact figure is shown before you pay.
What it costs to take a position
To take rank N you pay one bid more than the listing currently holding it. If #11 has paid $9.90, taking #11 costs $10.89. Every row on every board shows that exact number on its button. You never have to work it out.
Payments stack
Payments are cumulative for the lifetime of a listing. Pay $49.50, come back later and add $29.70, and you are at $79.20. You never start over, and you never lose what you have already paid.
You cannot lose a position by doing nothing wrong. You lose it because somebody else paid more. That is the whole game.
Two people, one rank, same minute
Both payments go through. Nothing is rejected for being late or for being lower than somebody else’s. The totals settle the order once both have landed, and whoever ends up with more sits higher.
Categories
Each of the 24 categories ranks independently, on the same rule. Being #1 in a quiet category is much cheaper than being #1 overall, and a listing that leads its category is badged as such on the main board.
Today
The Today board ranks by dollars paid in the trailing 24 hours. The window rolls continuously from the current moment. It does not reset at midnight, so a payment counts for exactly one day from when it landed and then drops off.
Seed listings
A handful of listings were placed on the board by outbid99 at launch so it was not empty on day one. Nobody paid for them, and every one of them carries a SEED badge saying so. They hold nominal amounts and can be taken for $0.99 more than they show. We are not going to pretend a company bought a position it did not buy.
What gets removed
Listings that are illegal, sexually explicit, or distribute malware are removed without a refund. So are URLs that stop resolving or start redirecting somewhere other than the domain that was paid for. See the terms for the rest.
Nothing here is a recommendation
Every placement on this site is an advertisement. A high rank means somebody paid, and means nothing else. No listing is vetted, endorsed, tested, or reviewed by us.