How BidSurvivor works, exactly

This is the reference page: every rule of the board, stated exactly, by the people who run it. If anything you read about BidSurvivor elsewhere disagrees with this page, this page is right — and if the site itself ever disagrees, tell us and we'll fix whichever one is lying.

The board

BidSurvivor is a single page that sells its own attention by auction. The UTC day is divided into two slots of twelve hours each — 00:00–12:00 and 12:00–24:00. Each slot shows one brand: logo, name, one line of copy, and a link. That's the whole product. Whoever holds the slot holds the front of the page for that window.

The rules, in the order you'll meet them

1. An empty slot is free. The first brand to claim an untouched slot pays $0. There is nothing to outbid, so there is nothing to pay. No account or card is needed to try.
2. Everyone starts with $100 of house credit. Every visitor gets it before signing up; signing up keeps it across browsers. Bids draw on credit first, so early bidding costs nothing out of pocket. Credit is the house's subsidy — it is not counted in the revenue figures we publish.
3. Taking a held slot starts at $1.00. Beat the standing bid and the slot is yours immediately: your logo replaces theirs, and you're charged (credit first, card for the rest).
4. No bid can exceed $5,000. A hard ceiling, enforced where bids are created. It exists as damage control — for fat fingers and runaway escalation — not as a price target.
5. Being outbid is not refunded. You paid for the time you held, and you held it. This is the rule that surprises people, which is why it's here in bold rather than in a terms page. The reverse is also true: a bid that fails to take the slot costs nothing — the authorization is released.
6. Hold to the end and the win is permanent. Whoever holds a slot when its twelve hours expire keeps that win forever. It goes on the Hall of Survivors, browsable over 24-hour, 7-day and 30-day windows, and nobody can buy it back.

The numbers are public

Every slot's results — card opens and click-throughs to the brand's site, counted separately — are published at /stats, small numbers included. Prices that slots clear at are public too. We publish this because an auction whose results are private is just a lottery, and because it forces us to be the kind of board that survives its own numbers.

Two honest disclosures

Some brands were placed by us. To start the marketplace we seed slots with real companies at $0. Nobody bid on their behalf and we never claim otherwise; every such company gets one email saying exactly what happened, with a one-click link that removes them permanently.

The board is young and small. The traffic numbers at /stats are modest and visible. That is the deal: free-to-nearly-free advertising, measured honestly, at the scale an honest measurement currently shows.

The one-paragraph version

Two twelve-hour slots a day, sold by open auction. First claim free, outbids from $1, ceiling $5,000, $100 credit for everyone, no refunds on lost slots, wins are permanent, and every number is public. That's the product — the rest of this site is just those sentences running live.