GAME THAT PAYS
THE FIRST MOVE COSTS $7. WHAT YOU BUILD AROUND IT IS UP TO YOU.
I came up with Game That Pays by looking at business a little like a property game.
Going around the board collecting a paycheck might keep you moving. But the interesting part of a property game is building something that can work for you after you’ve made the first move.
That’s the idea behind Game That Pays. Except there are no imaginary properties and no make-believe dollars.
There are real niche websites, real advertising products, real customers, and an optional affiliate program that pays commissions on qualifying sales.
This isn’t a game that promises to make you money. It’s a different way to think about building an online advertising business.
FIRST, MEET THE $7 PARKING SPOT
A Parking Spot is a full-page online advertisement you create on a participating website. It has its own shareable URL, room for your story, photographs, supported video embeds, links, contact information, and a call to action.
You might use one to promote a vehicle, business, product, property, vacation rental, service, video, or something else that genuinely belongs on that website.
One standard Parking Spot costs $7, one time. No subscription. No scheduled renewal. No scheduled expiration, as long as the page remains eligible under the website’s rules.
You’re not renting a line of text in a classified ad. You’re building an entire page around something worth showing people.
And you get to share that page wherever it makes sense.
HERE’S HOW YOU PLAY
1. Pick a website that fits your subject. A car business belongs somewhere different from a travel business or an author promoting a book.
2. Give your Parking Spot a job. Sell something. Find a customer. Promote a video. Introduce a service. Generate an inquiry. Help somebody discover your business.
3. Build a traffic route. Share your page on Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, LinkedIn, X, your own website, an email, or anywhere else you can appropriately reach an interested audience.
4. Keep score. Did someone contact you? Buy something? Watch your video? Become a customer? Learn what worked, improve the page, or create another one.
That’s the game: build something useful, promote it, measure what happens, and make the next move.
ONE PARKING SPOT IS A PAGE. A COLLECTION CAN BECOME A CHANNEL.
Create a Parking Spot and you’ve got one page.
Create more around the same interest or business and those pages collect around your profile. I call that your Garage.
Keep publishing and sharing useful pages, and that Garage can start looking like your own Channel inside the website.
A car enthusiast might build a Garage of buying guides. A Realtor might feature neighborhoods, listings, and services. A travel creator might build a Channel around destinations and experiences. A writer might use pages to connect books, articles, podcasts, and videos.
You don’t have to buy fifty-two Parking Spots. You can start with one.
But here’s a simple challenge: one $7 Parking Spot a week for fifty-two weeks costs $364 in total. That’s fifty-two separate pages, not a $364 subscription, and there is no requirement to publish weekly.
What could fifty-two useful advertising pages do for your business, your content, or your brand? That’s something you can test—not something anyone can guarantee.
THREE WAYS THE SAME ADVERTISING CAN CREATE VALUE
First: your own advertising may create value. A Parking Spot might help generate a sale, a lead, an affiliate commission from an unrelated offer you are allowed to promote, or another useful business result. It might also produce nothing. You decide what success means and measure it yourself.
Second: you can build advertising campaigns for clients. A marketer, creator, or agency can charge clients its own price for writing, designing, publishing, and managing campaigns. The actual platform products still cost $7 for a Parking Spot, $25 for StoryDrive™ 1000, and $49 for Video Spotlight where offered. What you charge for your own work is your independent business decision. That’s a service business, not an affiliate commission.
Third: you can apply to promote the advertising products themselves. The participating websites have affiliate programs. If you’re approved and an eligible customer buys a qualifying product through your properly attributed relationship, you may earn a commission.
The current direct commissions on these advertised products are:
| Advertising product | Current price | Direct affiliate commission (20%) |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Parking Spot | $7 | $1.40 |
| StoryDrive™ 1000 | $25 | $5.00 |
| Video Spotlight, where offered | $49 | $9.80 |
StoryDrive™ is an optional recorded-view promotion for an eligible Parking Spot under its terms. The $49 Cool Car Guy Video Spotlight is optional placement for an approved, customer-supplied video on its YouTube and Rumble channels; it is not a video-production service. Product availability and terms depend on the website.
Nobody gets paid just for joining, registering, or recruiting another affiliate. An actual qualifying product purchase has to occur.
And if a customer you referred returns to purchase more eligible advertising on that same website, additional properly attributed purchases can potentially produce additional commissions.
THERE’S MORE THAN ONE BOARD
I built CoolCarGuy.com as my separate cool-car business. I also built Freak Sites, a separate business made up of eight niche websites.
Together, that’s nine places to build Parking Spots, each focused on its own subject:
- CoolCarGuy.com — the cool-car world, separate from Freak Sites.
- CarsFreak.com — the broader automotive world.
- HousingFreak.com — housing and property.
- TravelersFreak.com — travel and experiences.
- RunnerFreak.com — running and the businesses around it.
- WritersFreak.com — books, writing, publishing, and creators.
- WeaponsFreak.com — lawful, on-topic products, history, technology, and related subjects.
- GraveFreak.com — cemeteries, history, genealogy, memorials, and more.
- SponsorsFreak.com — brands, creators, sponsorships, and events.
They use similar Parking Spot technology, but Cool Car Guy and Freak Sites are not the same company. Each participating website has its own accounts, product eligibility, affiliate application, and tracking. A referral on one website does not automatically become a referral on another.
You can concentrate on one subject or build different advertising collections on different websites, according to each site’s rules.
WANT TO BUILD A BUSINESS AROUND SELLING THE ADVERTISING?
You don’t have to. You can simply create and promote your own pages.
But the affiliate side is worth understanding. The current connected commission structure is 20% direct, followed by 15%, 10%, 5%, and 5% on eligible connected positions. It applies to qualifying purchases, not to the act of enrolling people.
Someone can build a small book of direct advertising customers. Someone else may choose to develop a connected group of approved affiliates who also find customers. And an advertiser can keep building new Parking Spots without getting involved in affiliate marketing at all.
That’s why I created ShareMerchant.com: to explain the advertising brokerage and affiliate side without making you learn a board game first. 😂
MAKE YOUR FIRST MOVE
Pick a subject. Visit the website that fits it. Explore the pages other people have built. Then decide whether a $7 Parking Spot could actually be useful to you.
Build a page. Give it a purpose. Share it. Measure the result.
That’s Game That Pays.
Explore the advertising: CoolCarGuy.com | FreakSites.com
Explore the affiliate opportunity: ShareMerchant.com
Game That Pays is an educational marketing concept, not a separate investment opportunity or a guarantee of earnings. Parking Spots are advertising and publishing products, not ownership interests in any website or company. Advertising can produce no leads, sales, or economic return. Affiliate commissions require eligible, properly tracked, completed product purchases and are governed by each participating site’s current terms. Pricing, eligibility, features, and program rules may change.