# FAQ | AgencyLadder > Straight answers about listing, paying, decay, refunds, links, and your data on AgencyLadder. Source: https://agencyladder.com/faq Minimum listing is $1. Overtake premium is a flat $5. Decay is 2% a day, compounding, from each bid's own date. ## Getting listed ### What does $1 get me? A place on the public board, immediately. $1 is the whole-dollar minimum bid and becomes the starting effective balance the moment Stripe confirms payment. It also buys a profile page, a public click count, and an outbound link. It does not buy a fixed rank, where a listing lands depends on what everyone else currently holds. ### Is my listing reviewed before it appears? No. Payment is the only gate. The moment Stripe confirms the payment, the webhook creates the listing live, on the board, in the directory, in the sitemap, immediately. Nobody reviews it first. ### How do I sign in? No passwords. Go to /auth, enter the email used at checkout, and a link arrives that is valid for 15 minutes and works once. ## Money and decay ### How is rank decided? By one number: effective balance, the sum of every bid ever made, each still worth whatever decay has left of it. Highest number ranks first. Category and country filters do not create a separate ranking, they filter the one global list. ### What is decay, and why does it exist? Every bid loses 2% of whatever is left of it, every day, from the moment it is placed, forever. It compounds, so it is steepest early and gentler later. It exists so the board cannot be bought once and abandoned. ### What if I stop paying? The balance keeps decaying at 2% a day and rank falls as others pass it. It never goes negative and nothing is ever owed. The listing itself is unaffected. ### What does passing someone cost? The effective balance of whoever is directly above, plus a flat $5, rounded up to the next whole dollar. The $5 exists so a payment actually passes them instead of tying, ties are decided by age, not money. ### Can I get a refund? No. Payments are non-refundable. A payment buys a position on a live directory the instant it is processed, and that position is inherently temporary by design: another business can outrank you at any time, and your own balance decays daily. This is not something learned after paying either: the listing form links the non-refundable and decay terms, and topping up an existing listing requires checking a box stating both facts before the payment button unlocks. The one exception is a technical failure on our side that kept a payment off the board. ## Rank and competition ### What happens on a tie? Whichever listed earlier keeps the higher rank. Matching whoever is above is never enough to pass them, that is exactly what the $5 overtake premium is for. ### How fast does rank update after I pay? Within seconds. Stripe confirms the payment, the webhook writes the bid, and the board reflects it on the next read. Decay and rank are both computed live at read time, there is no nightly batch job to wait for. ### Do I get removed if my balance decays close to zero? No. Decay only ever costs position, never the listing. The directory entry and profile page stay up regardless of how far the balance has decayed. ## Trust and honesty ### Is this gambling? No. Gambling means a prize is awarded by chance to one winner while everyone else who paid gets nothing. None of that is present here. There is no draw, no random outcome, no countdown timer, and no hidden number, the exact price of every position is calculated from a published formula and shown before payment. There is no losing side either: every business that pays is listed and stays listed. What is bought is a specific amount of ranking balance, credited to the payer's own listing in full the instant it is paid. That is a purchase, not a bet. ### Is this an auction? Not in the way that matters. In an auction, the highest bidder gets the item and everyone else who bid walks away with nothing. Here, everyone who pays gets exactly what they paid for: a listing and a position calculated from the amount paid, credited in full, immediately, with no separate fee that does not count toward rank. It is closer to renting advertising space by the day, a billboard or a paid search placement, where a position is bought, runs for a while, and is renewed to keep it. ### What if I pay and immediately get outranked? That can happen, and it is not a malfunction. Rank is live: if another business pays more in the seconds after a payment clears, it will show above the next time the board refreshes, at most a few seconds later. Nothing is lost when that happens. The payment still counts in full toward the effective balance, decaying at the same 2% a day as everyone else's, for as long as it exists. It does not buy a guaranteed rank, it buys a specific amount of ranking weight, worth exactly what it is worth against whatever everyone else currently holds. ### What stops you from creating fake listings to inflate the board? The same rule that applies to everyone else: a listing can only be created by the Stripe webhook, and only after Stripe confirms a real charge. There is no internal tool, admin panel, or database shortcut that inserts a listing without a matching payment, the webhook is deliberately the only path in the codebase that can create one. Inflating the board would require actually paying real money to do it, and it would show up as a real, named listing with a real link, exactly like anyone else's. ### What happens if nobody ever visits my listing? The listing stays exactly as listed, and decay keeps running exactly the same regardless of clicks. There is no guaranteed level of traffic, clicks, or leads, and the click count is public precisely so a buyer can judge whether a position was worth what it cost. ### Is this worth it compared to Clutch or DesignRush? Depends what is being bought. Clutch and DesignRush sell placement through review counts, categories, and sales calls, and their own rankings are shaped by relationships and packages whose price is not fully visible. Here the entire mechanism is one public number: whoever paid the most is #1, and anyone can check exactly what it would cost to pass them. ### What happens to my money if you shut down? There is no fund set aside to refund a decaying balance if the Service closes, the same way there would not be for an ad campaign on a platform that shut down mid-flight. Payments are non-refundable for the reasons in the terms, and that does not change if the Service stops running. Notice would be attempted if that ever happened, but no wind-down period or payout is promised. ### Do you sell my data? No. The email used to list, the business details submitted, and a hashed IP for click counting and fraud prevention are collected to run the Service: sign-in links, dashboard access, and opt-in alert emails. None of it is sold to third parties. ### Why is there no free tier? Because payment is the entire mechanism, not a paywall in front of one. Rank is purely what has been paid, a free tier would mean some listings compete on money and others on nothing, which is not a ranking anymore. The $1 minimum also works as a spam filter: a listing costs something to create, so putting a link on the board is not free the way a comment box is. ## Your listing and data ### Do you follow my link? No. Every outbound link on a listing carries rel="noopener sponsored nofollow", disclosing honestly that the link is a paid placement. ### Do I get traffic I can see in my own analytics? Yes. Every outbound click carries utm_source=agencyladder, utm_medium=referral, a campaign tag, and utm_content naming the exact rank held when the click happened. ### How do I edit or remove my listing? Sign in at /auth with the email used at checkout. Self-serve editing and pausing are rolling out; until then, email joseph@ondutyops.com. ## Legal ### Is this paid placement? Yes, entirely. Rank is advertising, decided by money and nothing else. There is no vetting, evaluation or endorsement of any listing. ### Who runs this? OnDutyOps LLC operates AgencyLadder. For corrections, removal requests, data requests, or a question this page did not answer, email joseph@ondutyops.com. Full mechanism with worked dollar examples: https://agencyladder.com/rules List your business for $1: https://agencyladder.com/list