Outrank - pay to list launchboard - is it worth it? (math incl)

!! The article is about the launch listing platform, not the SEO tool.

StartupBase has a feature called Outrank. Paste a URL, pay $15 or more, and your rank on the leaderboard is the total youve ever paid. Top 8 hold the homepage, and this has gone mini-viral last week.

Credit where due, the copy is the most honest ive read on a launch site: "pay what you want, earn a DR 72 dofollow backlink."

I scraped all 88 cards on the board. Total paid is $3,078 for 1,214 clicks, about $2.54 per click. The median card paid $15 and got 5 clicks. Thirty-five cards, 40% of the board, paid exactly $15 and average 3.7 clicks each. Another 25 older cards paid $5 to $10, so the "$15 minimum" was raised at some point.

It is, clearly, at least to me, the case that the traffic coming to the page is saas launchers, so this might make sense for some $70 ltv high-conversion saas marketing tools, but i would be surprised if the click economics make any sense for others.

#1 today costs $360, #8 costs $130. Below that you get a card and a backlink, not the homepage. Top 8 cards took in $1,406, 46% of all money on the board. They received 292 clicks, 24% of all clicks. The other 80 cards took $1,672 and received 922 clicks. Thats $4.82 per click on the homepage against $1.81 off it.

issue with the chart is that we dont really have knowledge of how long each company stayed on the page.

The best cost per click is off the homepage. The $16 to $49 tier averages $1.38 per click. outrank.so at #19 paid $48 for 53 clicks, $0.91 each. The worst is #1. aelívra paid $350 for 13 clicks, $26.92 per click. The card is under a day old, the number will move. The most-clicked card, Codus at 73 clicks, sits at #6 and paid $140. see.io at #10 paid $100, got 66 clicks, isnt on the homepage at all.

Age doesnt help, and clicks plateau fast.

Rank never decays.

The page compares itself to "homepage placements elsewhere at $200+/month." That part is true. Those placements send traffic. This one sends a few dozen clicks. The comparison flatters the price, not the outcome.

The backlink is the real asset. Its DR 72 on Ahrefs, dofollow, permanent. But it sits on a page full of other paid links to random SaaS, domain flippers, and, at #2 and #15, two other pay-to-rank boards. Googles guidelines treat paid links as link schemes.

Screening is name, logo, and a block on gambling, adult, and scams. Theres no product review. "products, agencies & profiles" means any URL.

The meta moment says it all. #2 is "The Board," a pay-to-rank brand board. #15 is "Elite Club," a private pay-to-rank ledger. #21 is a pay-to-rank domain board. Pay-to-rank boards buying rank on pay-to-rank boards says a lot about demand saas founders have to drive traffic.

Opinion:

Marketing is going to get way more creative, as anything where "just pay and dont think" will get saturated very quickly...