The Big Word Project is a clever experiment in viral marketing featuring a website that sells English dictionary words for $1 per letter. When you purchase a word it is then associated with the website of your choice. Guess which two I bought.
The Big Word Project has been set up by Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, two Masters students from Northern Ireland, who are exploring what different words mean to different people. The project allows you to purchase a word from our list to represent your site. Your site will then represent this word in our list and when people click on it, they will be taken to your site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.
via Daring Fireball
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Great idea! Perhaps the million dollar website idea for 2008. I just bought ‘hiking’ and ‘maps’ for my website.
I see ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ is still available for an entrepreneur who wants to move fast. And has deep pockets.
And how exactly is this any different than any SEO scam?
How is it a scam?? people need backlinks etc? another type of directory i guess. i think its a great idea.
I’m not the creator but have been in contact with him.
The script is selling for about $18.95 on w3ec.com.
There is many people who like this idea and many who hate it. I’m more inclined to hate it until the links are actually worth something in terms of SEO.
I do run my own however :P
I don’t see the point of this site at all – what advantage does it offer to people who buy a word? Any value must come from people visiting the site and using it as a directory yet the directly is totally subjective and based upon ability to pay rather than an objective endorsement of the site (like Yahoo etc). There will be some publicity for the sites obviously from publicity surronding the BWP site, but that will fade quickly… how many people are going to use this site over the next few months? It’s a great ploy to call this site a ‘viral marketing’ site as it gives it some kind of ‘edge’ that in reality it doesn’t have – the only winners will be the developers who, in the short term at least, will make money. Ultimately it just shows what idiots most people are!
I can see why people would buy these, I’m tempted myself to buy one but their page rank is zero which makes me wonder if it’s worth it for the backlink alone but on the other hand, if you don’t get it before it’s all over the place then who knows if it’s going to be big news in the future.
The script for sale mentioned above I guess is a neat idea but I’m wary of making purchases at sites that promote free open web proxies. Yikes.
The bid word project is impressive i agree. but i had issue with the word i wanted being unavailable so i searched and looked around and found another great page called projectword with the same principles and got the word that i wanted for the same price. you should check it out, http://www.projectword.co.uk.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained I always say. It certainly is a reasonable form of advertising for $1 per letter. I hope this does well for those spending some money on it. It sure beats paying $4.30 per gallon for gas. Is that word taken?!
I have found a similar site to this one:
http://www.linkinword.com