linkpreneur Price index / Updated 31 October 2026
Real quotes.
A clearer market.
Publisher asking prices and settled placement costs from Linkpreneur's own records. Asking prices and final purchase prices measure different things.
Key findings, October 2026 Frozen on one date, with the data and a chart to embed.
Drawn from 360 quotes across 262 sites we have priced. Each site counts once however often we asked it, so a publisher we negotiated with repeatedly cannot bend the index.
Half the sites ask less than this, half more.
Where most quotes land once the extremes are set aside.
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.
Where the readers are
A network with US readers.
For 33 of the 53 sites in our network, the United States is the largest audience.
On 12 of them, more than half of the organic search traffic comes from the US.
Counted on 30 October 2026 from estimated organic search traffic per country, across the approved sites in our network. No site is named.
Settled placements
What was actually paid.
From 32 settled placements, counted 31 October 2026. Your own price is on every recommendation before you approve.
All settled so far for one buyer, so read these as a first sample, not a market price.
Average purchase price
Actual average purchase price in the sample.
Placement fee: $39 per link as a member ($149/month), or $79 with no membership. Fixed, whatever the publisher charges.
All-in: the publisher's price plus that fee, shown before you approve.
Across 4 placements where the publisher named a price first, they asked $470.00 in total and we paid $380.00.
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 | 74 | $110 | $50 to $300 |
| 1,000 to 10,000 | 135 | $110 | $70 to $230 |
| 10,000 to 50,000 | 41 | $120 | $60 to $300 |
| Over 50,000 | 11 | $160 | $70 to $220 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| News and media | 37 | $120 | $70 to $220 |
| Education | 36 | $120 | $70 to $260 |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 34 | $120 | $60 to $300 |
| VPN and security | 27 | $130 | $80 to $250 |
| SaaS and software reviews | 23 | $120 | $75 to $160 |
| General technology | 22 | $105 | $60 to $140 |
| Business and finance | 21 | $110 | $80 to $160 |
| Marketing and SEO | 18 | $100 | $75 to $180 |
| Development and programming | 13 | $100 | $80 to $180 |
| Ecommerce | 10 | $100 | $70 to $200 |
| Health and wellness | 7 | $100 | $50 to $160 |
Open books
What we keep out.
This index counts every quote a publisher named us. What reaches a client is narrower: most sites we look at are turned down before anyone is offered a page on them.
We turned down about 3 in 4 sites we decided on (165 of 221, counted 31 October 2026). What we turn down, and why
The link price index, once a month
What publishers ask us, by traffic band and niche, what moved since last month, and what we turned down and why. From our own vetting records, with the sample size beside every figure. One email a month.
We email you to confirm first. Unsubscribe in one click. Privacy policy.
How this was counted
Last recomputed on 31 October 2026. The page reads the records live, so it is current whenever you open it.
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.
Know where every
dollar goes.
Publisher prices at cost. A fixed fee per link. A membership only if it pays off for you.