Recently, I was invited to participate in the beta launch of an exciting new service offering a fun new way for webmasters to capitalize their website.  Rank Trader uses the stock market concept to allow webmasters to trade virtual shares of their website.

What is Rank Trader

Rank Trader is a stock market for websites.  Webmasters can offer virtual shares of their websites that people can buy and sell.

The virtual shares or “V shares,” as Rank Trader calls it, are then traded on their open market.  One key difference to note from an actual stock or shares in the company, V shares are completely virtual.  This means that the investor does not actually own any portion of the website through purchasing V shares.  The webmaster maintains complete ownership in their website.

However, V shares takes on the relative value of the website, by representing the value of the websites popularity.  In theory, the price of your website’s V shares should rise and fall based on your website’s popularity on the internet.  So, as your website gains in traffic, SEO juice, and improves it’s social graph, it’s V shares should rise in value.

Investors can then deposit and invest real money into buying and selling V shares just like in a normal stock market.

How Rank Trader Works

Currently, Rank Trader is in a beta stage, which allows beta members to deposit virtual money and start trading without putting in real cash.  Anyone can make a deposit and start investing in vshares of websites.

They have a very clean, easy to navigate website.

I started off by creating my free beta account with Rank Trader.  Creating a beta account was a simple process.  Rank Trader has provided me with an easy to use sign up plugin that anyone can fill out to try out the public beta.

Once I created my account, I was able to navigate right to the bank and deposit my virtual money to begin trading.

I did have a small glitch initially depositing virtual money into my account as the system didn’t allow me to go beyond triple digits.  Initially, I thought I was limited to a maximum of a 900 deposit.  However, I refreshed my browser and was able to deposit more money.  This turned out to be a temporary glitch.

I went ahead and deposited 100,000 in virtual money.  With my previous glitch, I had an odd total of 100,900 in my account to begin.

At this point, I visited the marketplace to see how that looked.  The marketplace was well set up and looked much like a regular stock trading platform.

You can see the various websites being traded below the graph.  They each have actions that you can click to either buy or sell vshares.

Clicking the action button brings up a popup that allows you to give the specifics of your action.

As you can see, it’s fairly simple and self explanatory.

Rank Trader For Webmasters

Webmasters are able to register their websites and make an initial public offering for investors to buy vShares in their website.

The process for registering a website is quick and easy.

The webmaster simply fills out a form describing their website.  Afterwards, the site is submitted for approval.  In my case, it took less than 24 hours for Riches Corner to be approved.

Once I was approved, I still had to do an Initial Public Offering to place vShares of Riches Corner in the marketplace.

The option for starting an IPO is under the Marketplace tab.

Offering an IPO allowed me to specify the amount of shares that I wanted to offer to the public.  Rank Trader does take a transaction fee out of your bank for the Initial Public Offering.  This appears to be the way that Rank Trader monetizes their concept.

Final Thoughts

I’m still exploring all the options that Rank Trader offers.  I found that Rank Trader is a completely novel concept bringing the stock market idea to websites.  Webmasters have the opportunity to earn money from investors building up the rankings of their websites as they would normally do.  At the same time, those who want to invest in a website without being a webmaster can buy and sell shares of other people’s sites.

I believe that Rank Trader offers an exciting new opportunity for webmasters and investors.  Currently, they are in the beta stage which allows their beta members to try out their service free of charge with virtual money.

I would encourage anyone interested to sign up for a beta account and give Rank Trader a try.