Everything that decides a position.

A listing’s position is the sum of every payment it has ever had confirmed. Not its largest bid, not its most recent one. The total.

Boards sort by that total, descending. When two listings have spent exactly the same, the one that listed first ranks higher.

Every bid you place is added to your total and stays there. Being outspent does not return your money and does not reduce your total. It just means someone else’s total is now larger.

This is the deliberate opposite of an auction. In an auction, the $50 that held first place becomes worthless the moment someone bids $51. Here it keeps working: the money you have already spent is the thing your rival has to beat, and defending a position costs far less than taking one.

Rankings change when Podium’s payment provider confirms a payment by signed webhook, never when a browser reports success. Between paying and the confirmation arriving, a listing has not moved.

In practice this takes seconds. When it takes longer, the position you end up with is the one your money buys at the moment it lands, which may not be the one projected when you opened checkout, because someone else’s payment may clear first.

$1 puts you on the board, and counts as your opening bid. Single bids range from $1 to $10,000; there is no limit on how many you place.

One listing per domain. A withdrawn listing releases its domain.

The same total counts on every board a listing appears on: global, up to three categories, and one country. A listing can be fortieth globally and first in its category, and both are true.

Positions on each board are computed from the same number, independently.

Clicks, card views and page views are counted on Podium’s servers, deduplicated per visitor, with obvious automation excluded. They are counts of things that happened.

Podium publishes no score it did not measure. There is no growth index, no influence rating, no quality signal, because none of those would mean anything on a board where position is bought.

A refunded or charged-back payment is subtracted from the total and the boards are recomputed. A listing refunded down to nothing comes off entirely.

Listings that are fraudulent, misrepresent what they link to, or point somewhere harmful are suspended. Money already paid is not a defence against that, and suspension does not automatically refund it.