Price index
What publishers actually ask for a link, from every quote we have been given, and what we charge on top of it. Real prices from real sites, in aggregate.
Nothing here is an estimate. Every figure is computed from quotes publishers named or placements we settled, and where we do not have enough of something to say anything useful, we leave it out rather than print it thin.
What publishers ask
Drawn from 196 quotes across 139 sites we have priced. Each site counts once however often we asked it, so a publisher we negotiated with repeatedly cannot bend the index.
- Median ask
- $120.00
- Half the sites ask less than this, half more.
- The middle half
- $100-$140
- Where most quotes land once the extremes are set aside.
- Cheapest to dearest
- $70-$300
- The lowest and highest a publisher has named.
How the prices are spread
Sites per fifty-dollar step, in dollars. A median alone invites you to imagine every link costs that.
Price against audience
The obvious assumption is that a bigger site costs more. Here is what the quotes actually say.
| Monthly organic visits | Sites | Median ask | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1,000 | 14 | $130.00 | $75-$140 |
| 1,000 to 10,000 | 59 | $120.00 | $70-$300 |
| 10,000 to 50,000 | 42 | $120.00 | $70-$225 |
| Over 50,000 | 22 | $140.00 | $90-$300 |
A site with fifty times the audience does not ask fifty times the price, or anything close to it. Price in this market tracks what a publisher thinks they can get, not what they can deliver, which is exactly why buying on a headline metric goes wrong and why the checking is the work.
Price by what the site is about
The same reading, split by subject. Categories with fewer than four sites are left out.
| Category | Sites | Median ask | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting and infrastructure | 23 | $130.00 | $85-$300 |
| Education | 21 | $140.00 | $70-$200 |
| News and media | 20 | $120.00 | $85-$200 |
| Business and finance | 12 | $120.00 | $85-$160 |
| VPN and security | 11 | $130.00 | $85-$200 |
| SaaS and software reviews | 10 | $100.00 | $80-$130 |
| General technology | 10 | $130.00 | $90-$220 |
| Development and programming | 8 | $120.00 | $100-$180 |
| Marketing and SEO | 7 | $100.00 | $75-$120 |
| Ecommerce | 7 | $120.00 | $70-$200 |
What we charge
Our own settled placements: the publisher price passed on at cost, the flat fee per link, and the all-in. Far fewer numbers than the market above, and the count is printed beside them for that reason.
- Average purchase price
- $134.44
- Average placement fee
- $50.00
- Average all-in
- $184.44
Based on 9 settled placements.
All-in by quality band
| Quality band | Placements | Average all-in |
|---|---|---|
| Mid (70 to 84) | 6 | $181.67 |
How this was counted
- The median, not the average. One publisher asking three hundred dollars pulls an average up and describes nobody, so the middle figure is used and the range is printed beside it.
- One site, one vote. Quotes are averaged per site before anything else, so a publisher we asked five times counts once.
- Nothing under four sites is shown. A band with two sites in it is an anecdote with a decimal point, and a thin band is dropped even when that leaves a gap in the table.
- No publisher can be identified from any of this. No domain, no single price, and no group small enough to work one out by elimination.
- Our own figures come from settled placements only, never from quotes or work in progress.
Last recomputed on 16 September 2026. The page reads the records live, so it is current whenever you open it.
See the publisher price before you agree to it.
Every recommendation names the site, what it costs us, and what we found when we checked it. You approve the ones you want, and nothing else moves.