How it works

Short version: 100 words, one owner each, highest bidder wins, and nothing is permanent.

There are exactly 100 words

Not every word on the internet — a curated set. Generic dictionary nouns only: no brands, no proper nouns, no names of real people. New words arrive in announced drops as the board fills up. A small board is the point; it is what makes any single word worth owning.

Highest bidder owns the word

Unclaimed words start at their base price — $5, $10 or $25 depending on the word. After that, each bid must clear the current price by at least $5 or 10%, whichever is larger.

There is no expiry

The word is yours until somebody pays more than you did. No renewal, no countdown, no lapsing because you missed an email.

Which means a price only ever moves up. What somebody paid for a word is its floor from then on, and the next person has to clear it.

“Permanent” is bounded by one honest thing: the site has to exist. We commit to running for at least 12 months from the day you buy, and if we close before that you get a pro-rata refund against that period. After it, no refund. The terms say it precisely.

You can be dethroned at any time

Anyone who pays more takes the word immediately, and you are not refunded. That is the entire game, and it is stated at the point of payment, not buried here. A word is locked for a few minutes right after it changes hands so a claim cannot be sniped the instant it lands.

You can also take a word back. Somebody paying more does not end your relationship with it — it sets the number you would have to beat.

What you actually get

A URL you can say out loud. ownaword.lol/<your word> points wherever you set it, for as long as you hold the word. Put it in a bio, on a slide, on a card.
Your name on the board and the page — display name, a line of copy, a logo and one outbound link.
A live badge for your README or footer that updates itself, and a share card that renders your ownership as an image.
Click counts you can verify. Outbound links are tagged, so the traffic appears in your own analytics rather than only in our number.

Links are nofollow and pass through an interstitial until reviewed.

Machines can read all of it

Every word is also an endpoint. /api/w/<word> returns the owner, the price, the history and the current asking price as JSON; /api/words returns the whole board; /llms.txt states the same facts in the format language models look for. All public, no key, CORS open.

Owners are buying visibility, so making the record awkward to read would work against the thing they paid for.

What you do not get

Any right to the word itself. This is a display lease on one website. It is not a trademark, not a domain, not transferable, and it grants nothing anywhere else on the internet.

What gets removed

Illegal content, malware, phishing, adult content, impersonation of a real person or company, and anything that makes a link unsafe to click. Removal frees the word; refunds in that case are handled case by case.

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