Buy attention. Not rank.
Every paid unit on DebutList sits inside a labelled frame, outside the rankings. Nothing about a ranking, a comparison table or a best-of list is for sale, at any price — and the second list on this page is the one worth reading first.
Inventory
Four units, each in its own frame. Rates are quoted per enquiry while the auction is being built — when it opens, the price becomes public and moves with demand, which is the point of running one.
- Homepage spotlight
- One slot, in the sidebar beside the board, above the fold. The most-seen paid unit on the site.
- Category slot
- One slot per category page and the product pages beneath it. Narrower reach, and a reader who has already chosen the subject.
- Promoted deal
- Top of /deals and the relevant category deal pages. Requires a live code that works for anyone arriving from here.
- Newsletter unit
- One labelled placement in the weekly digest, beside the launches rather than inside them.
The rules, in full
- Labelled, always
- Every paid unit carries a permanent “Sponsored” label, its own dashed frame and its own tint — all three. There is no format that blends in, and there will not be one.
- Outside the rankings
- A sponsored item never enters the leaderboard, category ordering, best-of lists or comparison tables. Buying one has no effect on organic position, and the code cannot express one: the ranking module cannot import the placements app.
- Placement and traffic, never links
- Paid links carry
rel="sponsored". We do not sell dofollow backlinks — that is link manipulation under Google's spam policy, and it would burn your domain alongside ours. - Public bids, when the auction opens
- A straight highest-bid auction with visible bids. No bid fees, no penny-auction mechanics, no lowest-unique-bid variants. Until then, slots are sold by enquiry at a stated rate.
- Refunds
- Outbid before your slot runs and you are refunded in full, automatically. A slot that has run is not refundable, and that is said again at checkout.
Not for sale, ever
Not "expensive". Not "case by case". There is no price, and asking does not start a negotiation.
- A position in any ranking
- A row in a comparison table
- A place on a best-of list
- A dofollow link
- Removal of a bad review
- Deletion of a closure record
Why an auction
A rate card is a guess. An auction discovers what a slot is actually worth to the people who want it, adjusts by itself when demand moves, and removes the "email us for rates" conversation entirely.
It also does something a rate card cannot: the price is public, so a founder can see what attention costs here before spending anything — and can decide it is not worth it.
How it looks on the page
The frame, the tint and the label, all three, every time. This is the real component, rendered here with an example booking.