Project Wonderful closed in 2018 and people are still looking for a replacement. Here is what Perch does the same way, and what it does differently.
| Network | Minimum to join | Publisher share | Payout threshold | Self-serve |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project Wonderful | None — closed August 2018 | 70% (took 30%) | Not published | Yes |
| Perch | None | 75% | $65.00 | Yes |
Sources, checked 2026-08-26: Project Wonderful (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Wonderful) · Post-mortem by Matthew Skala (ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/345)
Nothing — it closed in August 2018.
You are looking for what replaced it. The model here is the same one: time on a site, bought by auction, with no traffic minimum.
Nothing any more; it shut down in 2018. It is here for the reader who is looking for what replaced it.
Project Wonderful proved the model and then died of it: a first-price auction with no meaningful reserve drove typical bids down to pennies a day, and the network could not survive on that. Perch keeps the open, no-minimum part and fixes the part that killed it — you set a floor and nothing sells beneath it, ever. The trade-off is the same one Project Wonderful's publishers made and liked: you invite your own advertisers rather than being handed a pool.
On Project Wonderful the rate is an outcome — set by an auction, a matched advertiser, or a managed partner, and reported to you afterwards. On Perch you type a number: what one advertiser pays for one day in your slot. Nothing sells below it.
Project Wonderful's advertisers were, very often, other people in the same community — which is exactly the pattern here. The slot invites whoever is reading it.
No behavioural tracking — the position it was known for. Perch's embed sets no cookies and writes nothing to the visitor's device, so it does not itself create a consent-banner requirement. The full detail is on the security page, including the exact byte size the script adds to your page.
Project Wonderful does not publish a payout threshold. Perch pays out at $65.00, into your own Stripe account. For a site earning a few dollars a month, that gap is the difference between money arriving and a balance that only ever grows on a screen.
Not applicable here.
No published traffic minimum, but every site goes through an approval review
$5,000+ in annual ad revenue for the main programme; the Journey tier starts at 1,000 sessions
The full comparison table covers every network here with sources, or work out the numbers for your own site with the earnings calculator.