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Wordhugger is a new website that is monetizing words with an unusual angle.

For $60.00, you can buy a word and a webpage. You can put anything you want on the associated webpage. Stock it full of adsense ads, insert links back to your website, whatever you please.

The website was started by a enterprising 17 year old in which half of the money will go to pay for his college and half will go to a very good cause - Kiva - Which makes micro-loans for entrepreneurs in developing countries. This has to be the most brilliant and creative use of keywords I have seen in a long time.

From the Website:

Word Hugger is a website about micro investments, which are the internet’s newest virtual real estate gold. Investors can pick a word based on their hobby, business, interests, or expertise in a particular field. For a one time investment of $60, you own a page on the Word Hugger site for 10 years, and make ample amounts of money back from advertising, or you can resell your word at any time without restrictions. An example word would be if you are a movie fanatic, you can invest your $60 into purchasing the “movie” or “movie review” words on Word Hugger, and keep updated reviews on movies that you see. This is just one example of a Word Hugger micro investment page. To see more ideas on how people are making money from their micro investments, take a look at our most popular page. Word Hugger supports entrepreneurs in the developing world by donating 50% of all profits to Kiva, to lend money to those in need. Support the cause, expand your business, help other entrepreneurs, make lots of money, and be part of something great. Invest in Word Hugger today!.

I have no doubt that this will be a success. I have already bought my keywords.

This does bring up some interesting questions though.

1. Who has editorial control ? This is one of the issues Wikipedia has. People inserting misleading or just plain wrong information. The terms of service do require that you must be the registered owner if buying registered keywords, but is that enough to prevent smear campaigns against a name brand ?

2. Will this grow to be similar to the Domain Name Market ? Some of the very early tech savvy purchased domain names in hopes that they would be worth something in the future. I can see this happening with Wordhugger. How much would Blockbuster pay for a name like “movies” or “movie reviews” ? I suppose it could be on how well the page is marketed and the traffic it gets.

The greatest potential I see though is potential web traffic for the smaller companies.

This is a definite one to watch.