How it works

1. 1

   What a bid buys

   A bid buys a place on a public board, ranked by the amount. For as long as the lot stands, that place is four concrete things:

   • A row on the board page, with the photo, display name, bio and follower count pulled from the account itself.
   • A real link to the profile from that row, and the same link again from a permanent lot page at /x/handle or /instagram/handle. Both pages are public and crawlable, so the link is there for people and for search engines alike.
   • The traffic that comes down those links, counted and printed as the click count.
   • A rank that moves the second somebody pays more than you did.

   That is the whole of what money does here. Everything below is the detail of it.

2. 2

   A bid buys a place on the board, not the account

   This is the one to read twice, so here it is unhedged. Money on MediaBid buys a row in a public directory. It does not buy, sell, rent or transfer an account. Nothing that happens here changes who owns a handle, who can log into it, or who controls what it posts. We never hold a password, never broker a sale, never act as escrow, and any bid offered as payment for an account is void the moment we see it.

   You can pay to list a handle that is not yours. That puts a public profile in front of more people and sends the clicks to whoever runs it. It gives you no claim over the account, no say in what it does, and no standing if the person behind it would rather not be listed at all. Their request beats your money, every time. See withdrawing a lot.

3. 3

   Outbound links are marked as paid placement

   Every link from a lot to a profile carries rel="noopener sponsored", because a listing someone paid for has to be marked as paid.

   The link itself is real: public, crawlable, clickable, and it sends actual people and actual referral traffic to the profile. What the sponsored mark means is that the link is not offered as a ranking signal, and we do not sell it as one. We will not promise you a lift in search results, because nobody honest can.

   So be clear about what your money buys: a public listing on this board and the traffic that comes down it. Not a search ranking, not a placement in anyone else's results, and not any effect on how X or Instagram treat the account.

4. 4

   The reserve is one dollar

   A handle nobody has listed opens at $1. Pay the reserve and it is on the board that second, at the bottom, with its current bid printed beside it.

   There is no listing fee on top of the bid, no subscription, and nothing to renew. The amount you pay is the amount on the board.

5. 5

   Bids are whole dollars

   Seven dollars, never seven fifty. The form accepts a whole number of dollars between $1 and $50,000 and refuses everything else. The ceiling is there to catch a mistyped zero before it costs you one.

6. 6

   Taking a lot costs one dollar more

   Every lot prints what it costs to take it: the bid holding it plus $1. Pay that and you take the place. The lot you passed keeps its money and its listing, it just sits one row lower than it did a moment ago.

7. 7

   Rank is the amount, and nothing else

   The board sorts by standing bid, highest first. No decay, no time bonus, no weighting for followers, no model reading your posts. What you paid is where you sit.

   When two lots hold the same amount, whoever bid first sits above. Ties go to the earlier bid, on both boards, always.

8. 8

   Raising your own bid costs only the difference

   Hold a lot at $40, want it at $60, pay $20. You are topping up a standing bid, not placing a second one beside it. The board shows the new total, the receipt shows the difference, and the money already on the lot is never charged twice.

9. 9

   Bids are final

   Once a bid is paid it stands. There is no unwinding it, and being outbid is not a refund event — it is somebody paying more than you did. Your lot stays on the board at the amount you paid until you raise it or somebody passes it.

   If a payment fails, charges twice, or lands on the wrong handle, tell us on the contact page and we will put it right.

   Cards are handled by Stripe. MediaBid never sees or stores your card details. The full payment and refund terms are in the terms.

10. 10

    Clicks are counted honestly and cannot be bought

    Every time a visitor leaves the board for a profile, that click is counted on our side, on the way out. Trending reads the last hour of them.

    Money moves rank. It does not move that number. There is no package that adds clicks, no boost, no priority placement in the feed, no way to pay into Trending. It is the one column on the board money cannot buy, which is the only reason it is worth printing.

11. 11

    What will get a lot pulled

    A listing is a name, a photo and a line of text on a public board, so it is held to the standard you would expect of one. Do not:

    • list a handle to impersonate anyone, or pass an account off as yours when it is not;
    • put sexual, hateful, harassing or unlawful content in a display name or bio — including in the fields you can edit before paying;
    • list a handle in order to harass, expose or target the person behind it;
    • bid with a script or a bot, or touch the click count with one;
    • use MediaBid to buy, sell, rent or transfer an account, or to advertise doing so.

    A lot that breaks any of this comes off the board and the bid is not refunded — the rules are published here precisely so that is never a surprise. Everything above is set out in full in the terms.

Want the short version of why any of this exists? Read about MediaBid. This page is the plain-English account of the mechanics; the binding version is in the terms, and what we do with data is in the privacy notice.