SiteClash
Get your website seen in weekend battles
SiteClash started during the .lol leaderboard rush. I saw the excitement, opened an editor, and started building.
But I wanted to try something different: free entry, with builders rallying support for their websites instead of buying their way up the leaderboard.
The idea was that everyone would bring visitors into the same arena. Someone arriving to support one project could discover the others.
On paper, it made sense. I shipped the first working version quickly.
The routes worked. Votes accumulated. Eliminations ran. A champion took the crown.
The game still felt empty.
I’d built an always-running competition without an audience to keep it moving. A few visits spread across a week didn’t feel like an event. Sites joined at different times, and builders were being asked to keep promoting a platform that hadn’t yet shown it could give anything back.
Every share costs someone a little social capital. I hadn’t given people a strong enough reason to spend theirs.
So I rebuilt the format.
Now, exactly eight websites start together in one weekend battle. Everyone gets the same reveal moment. Seven scheduled eliminations lead to one winner. Votes carry through the fight, so an early push keeps its value.
Entry is free, and paid sponsorship stays outside the competition.
The hope is that concentrating everyone’s effort into one event gives each project a better chance of being discovered. Established projects can participate too. You shouldn’t need a new launch every time you want people to notice something you’ve built.
The first roster is now full. That’s progress, but it doesn’t prove the idea works yet.
The interesting part comes next: will participants share, will visitors explore the other projects, and will anyone want to come back?
One sentence from my original write-up sums up what I learned:
“A multiplayer growth loop cannot bootstrap itself from zero just because the diagram has arrows.”
I still like the idea enough to test it. I’m just much clearer now about what needs to happen outside the code.
Have you ever shipped something that worked technically, then realised it depended on behaviour you hadn’t given people enough reason to adopt?
The idea is to give builders a shared reveal rather than eight disconnected launch posts. The trade-off is that visitors can't explore the lineup beforehand. I don't yet know whether that gives people a reason to return or just makes the arena harder to evaluate.
The current roster is full, with activation scheduled for 11 September at 12:00 UTC. SiteClash is free. Builders share their own exact public vote links, and eligible visits count as cumulative votes. Shared attention depends on builders actually sharing; traffic, votes and wins aren't guaranteed.
If you landed before the reveal, what would help you decide whether to come back?
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2The reveal mechanic is interesting, but the key signal is return behavior. Do you have any evidence that withholding the lineup makes builders/visitors come back, rather than simply delaying the value they get from the site?
Building is the fun part. Marketing is the part that makes me stare at a finished product and wonder whether anyone will ever see it.
After launching several projects, I kept running into the same problem: you publish one post, maybe get a brief spike, and then everything goes quiet. Small builders are all trying to attract attention alone.
So I built SiteClash.
Eight live websites enter one shared weekend battle. They reveal together on Friday, each receives a public vote link, and seven scheduled chops narrow the field down to one crowned winner by Sunday.
Entry is free, and sponsorship cannot affect votes or the outcome.
The idea is simple: SiteClash coordinates a moment worth sharing, while the participating builders bring the attention. When everyone shares their fight link, visitors arrive in one arena where they can discover the entire roster.
I cannot promise anyone viral traffic. What I can provide is coordinated distribution, a public competition, and a more interesting reason to talk about your project than “here is another thing I built.”
The first roster is now complete. Filling those eight spots honestly felt like a bigger challenge than building the product. The lineup will remain sealed until the fight begins, but it contains some genuinely interesting projects.
Now I want to find out:
Will builders actually share when the fight opens?
Will visitors explore projects they did not originally arrive for?
Can a competition make people care beyond the initial launch post?
I would love an honest opinion from other builders. Would you put one of your projects into a future SiteClash fight?
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