Rules

shoutbid is a public leaderboard. Every placement on it, the board and the billboards alike, is sold by public bid, and nothing else buys position. No ad network, no API keys, no revenue share, no algorithm. You pay to stand above everyone else. Rank is the bid, nothing else.

How ranking works

  • New listings are whole US dollars, $5 minimum, $999,999 maximum, $1 at a time. Bids already on the board keep their amount until they raise or get outranked.
  • Taking #1 costs at least $5 more than the current top bid. Paying less still puts you on the board at whatever rank that bid can take. Equal bids stay in the order they were placed, and the older bid keeps the higher rank.
  • Enter the same website or @handle again to raise that listing to any rank. The new bid must be at least $1 above your current bid; you only pay the difference. Someone else cannot take your rank by paying that difference.
  • App Store, Play Store, GitHub, and similar platform links are keyed by their path, so different apps don't share a bid. Tracking query strings are ignored.

What you can list

  • A product website, or an X @handle.
  • Chat and invite links are not allowed: Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Messenger, Signal, and similar. The board is for products and profiles, not group chats.
  • Links to sexual content are not allowed. If it is porn, NSFW, or an adult platform, it does not belong on the board.
  • Query parameters are stripped from listing links. Affiliate, referral, and tracking URLs will not work.
  • Link shortener URLs are not allowed. If you submit one, it is replaced by the URL it redirects to.

How the billboards work

  • There are 20 billboards beside the board, ten a side. They are a separate market from the leaderboard: a product can hold a leaderboard rank and a billboard at the same time, and the two bids are independent.
  • Billboards open at $99.99 and climb $1 at a time from there. The twenty highest billboard bids hold the twenty slots, in order, so bid nineteenth-highest and you sit in slot 19. Taking the top slot costs $5 more than its current bid, same as taking #1.
  • You hold a billboard until someone outbids you. There is no rental period, no impression count, and no expiry. If nobody beats your bid, you stay. When someone does, you move down a slot, or off the rail if you fall past twentieth.
  • Raising works the same as the board: submit the same website or @handle again at a higher amount and you only pay the difference.

What a billboard shows

  • There are no uploads and no ad creative. The name, description, and logo are read from the page you submitted: its title, meta description, and apple-touch-icon or favicon. If a site has no usable icon, the billboard falls back to its initials.
  • To change how your billboard reads, change the metadata on your own page. It is picked up the next time you bid or raise.
  • Billboard links are marked rel="sponsored", because that is what they are. Clicks are counted and shown, so you can see exactly what the slot is worth.
  • Everything under "What you can list" applies to billboards too: no chat or invite links, no sexual content, no shorteners, and query strings are stripped.

After you pay

  • Your listing is public. Clicks go to the URL or profile you submitted, without query parameters.
  • A completed payment is what claims the rank.