ownaword

Where to advertise a startup with almost no budget

Written by somebody who sells one of the options below, so read it with that in mind. It is still the comparison I would have wanted: the honest version of what each of these does, including the two cases where buying a word here is clearly the wrong call.

The options

Search and social ads

ongoing, per click

Works when you already know your conversion rate and the maths works. Nothing else on this list is measurable in the same way, and if a paid channel is profitable for you, the correct budget for stunts is whatever is left after you have spent everything that channel will absorb.

Fails when you are pre-product-market-fit or your category has expensive keywords. You are bidding against companies with a sales team and a payback period measured in months, and a small budget buys a sample size too small to learn anything from.

Paid startup directories and listing sites

one-off or annual, per listing

Works when you want a page that exists and an entry somebody can find when they search your category plus the word 'alternatives'.

Fails when you expected to be seen. A listing is one row among thousands, sorted by something you do not control, and most of the traffic reported is other founders who came to submit their own. Many of these are also sold on the promise of a backlink that is nofollow, or on a domain nobody links to.

Sponsoring a newsletter

one-off, per send

Works when the audience is genuinely yours and the writer has real trust with them. This is the best-converting item on this list when the fit is right.

Fails when you pick on subscriber count. The number is unverifiable, the good ones are booked out, and a single send to a mismatched list is the fastest way to spend a month of runway on nothing.

Launch platforms

free, plus a week of your life

Works when you have a network to mobilise and something genuinely finished. A good launch day is still the highest-leverage free thing available.

Fails when you treat it as a channel rather than an event. It happens once, it is heavily gamed, and the traffic is gone in 48 hours.

A pay-to-rank leaderboard

one-off, and you slide down as others pay

Works when the board is the one people are currently looking at. outbid.lol reportedly passed a million visitors in its first week, and nothing else on this list buys that much attention for a few dollars.

Fails when the board is not that one. Roughly 190 imitations launched within a week of it, and a spot on a board nobody visits is a receipt rather than a placement. You are buying one specific traffic curve, not a category.

Buying a word here

one-off, won at auction from $25–$100

Works when you want the purchase itself to be the marketing. A company that bought the word 'seo' outright is a thing other founders screenshot; a company with a directory listing is not. It is also the only item here with no recurring cost and no end date.

Fails when you need measurable acquisition this quarter, or you are buying it for SEO. The links are nofollow, the traffic is smaller than a paid channel would give you for the same money, and there is no guarantee you end up with anything: bidding is public, and whoever wants the word more than you can simply say so before the clock stops.

The honest summary

If a performance channel is working for you, spend there first and keep spending there until it stops absorbing money. Nothing on this page beats a profitable ad account, and a site that told you otherwise would be lying to make a sale.

What this is for is the situation underneath that one: no conversion data yet, a budget too small to learn anything from an ad account, and an audience of other founders who are immune to advertising and not immune to a good move. In that situation the thing worth buying is not impressions, it is a reason for somebody to mention you — and a company publicly holding a generic word, at a price anybody can look up, that no competitor can ever have, is a reason.

The second thing you are buying is durability. Every other option on this list stops the day you stop paying. A word here is won once and then kept: no renewal, no expiry, nobody able to outbid you afterwards, and the badge sitting in your README keeps working the whole time.

Where to start

Pick the category you actually sell in. Every word shows its price, its owner and its click count publicly, before you spend anything.

Questions

How much does it cost to advertise here?
Whatever the last bid was. Every word carries a reserve of $25 to $100 depending on how contested the category is, bidding opens well under that, and each bid has to clear the one before it by $5 or 10%, whichever is larger. It is a one-off payment, not a monthly rate. A word somebody already holds is not for sale at any price, which is the other half of what you are buying.
Is this a backlink?
No. Owner links are nofollow and pass through an interstitial until reviewed, so this does nothing for your search rankings. If a dofollow link is what you are buying, this is the wrong purchase and any product selling you one for this price is worth being suspicious of.
How much traffic will I get?
Less than performance advertising would send you for the same money, and it is not the reason to buy. Clicks are counted and tagged so they appear in your own analytics rather than only in ours, and each word's page shows its click count publicly — including before you buy, so you can see what a given word actually delivers instead of taking a number on trust.
How long does the placement run?
Forever. There is no monthly rate, no renewal and no expiry, and nobody can take the word off you afterwards — each word is auctioned once and never returns to sale. The catch is on the other side of that: if you lose the auction, there is no second chance to buy it later at any price.
Who sees it?
Two audiences, and they are different. The board and the word's page are seen by people who come to the site. The badge you get for your README, and the screenshots people take of the board, reach considerably further — that second audience is the one worth buying for.

All 100 words →·Compared to outbid.lol·Compared to the Million Dollar Homepage