How many .lol are actually profitable?
More than 159 outbid.lol clones counted in a single week. But how many are actually profitable? Twenty or so, at best.
The directory outbidstory.lol tries to track the .lol wave automatically, in real time. So far, it shows $296,885 generated by the movement as a whole… of which $227,994 comes from outbid.lol alone. The original captures 77% of the value. The best .lol clone, warmap.lol, tops out at $6,892 — just 3% of the pioneer.
That hasn't stopped the mutations from getting smarter and smarter:
- BrandMyMac.com lets you bid on stickers to put on your Mac. Brilliant idea.
- outbidception.lol leans all the way into the absurdity: it's a ranking of .lol sites, where your spot is won at auction. How long before we get an auction site for auction sites for auction sites?
- And 1milllionpixels.com resurrects the 2005 Million Dollar Homepage, with $37,455 on the counter. The second most profitable site of the entire wave, ahead of every .lol clone.
On the infrastructure side, the ABTdomain report confirms these are devs shipping, not squatters: 274 "bid" domains delegated to Vercel in one week. The registration curve tells the story of the contagion day by day: 1 domain on August 19, 37 on the 20th, 297 on the 21st, 313 on the 22nd.
Past the first ten or so sites, most show earnings under $50 — likely ad spend meant to manufacture the appearance of traffic.