The Big Word Project was launched a couple days ago, and it’s an interesting idea. Basically, it’s just a list of a lot of English words. If you pay them $1 per letter for a word, that word will be a link to a website of your choosing henceforth (though pick wisely, because you can’t go back to change it later).
Possibly the most intriguing get-rich-quick scheme I’ve seen yet, and certainly a creative web venture. Will the site have any sort of longevity, or were the people who defined “spam” and “crap” to point straight to www.thebigwordproject.com correct? Regardless, the idea, though probably just a good way to convince people to spend money on nothing, is creative enough that I bought a word for Beckism.com. And to be honest, going through and seeing what words have been chosen for what websites is kind of fun. Props to the developers for thinking outside the box.
I found the Big Word Project from Daring Fireball and figured, much like you, that what the hell, advertising is generally more expensive than this.
Then I realized the two words I bought were either 1) not heard very often or 2) totally obscure artifacts of a liberal arts degree in lit theory.
And you’ve attracted at least one visitor from BWP, so it couldn’t have been all bad.
Posted 12:55 PM on Feb. 28, 2008 ↑
Hey, join the club! “Obscure artifact of a liberal arts degree” pretty much sums up the word that I chose perfectly.
I ended up impulse-buying one a little more standard today, but when I was browsing around the site, it wasn’t the standard, everyday words that I clicked out of curiosity.
It’ll be interesting to see how long the project lives before petering out. I doubt that I’ll get any real return on buying a word or two (according to my stats, so far I’ve essentially spent $1 per visitor from thebigwordproject.com; here’s hoping some of them subscribed to the feed), but it’s such an outlandishly creative idea that I wanted to support the two who were brazen enough to come up with such a thing and launch it.
Posted 1:13 PM on Feb. 28, 2008 ↑
Definatly an interesting concept. i was so intrigued i had a look and i agree with your comments. i also stumbled across projectword. this also offers the same opportunity to advertise your website/blogs through defining a word of your choice. each link to your website helps to increase your rank insearch engines. so i bought a word from each. have a look, http://www.projectword.co.uk. i think this will be of some interest to you.
Posted 2:58 PM on May. 24, 2008 ↑