Since we began doing guest posts over 18 months ago, the industry has gone through many changes. In order to ensure we were delivering the right product for the right price, we decided to do a study of a number of our competitors in the guest post industry by asking to see samples. Now, this isn’t a 100% scientifically accurate study, though it does give a good overview of the market.
We initially did not intend to make any of our findings public. However we thought it would be the best way for people to understand our products and how they fit into the market.
But first, a little bit about us: We are medium sized agency with extra capacity. We are looking to fill our capacity to WickedFire members by offering it at a reduced rate over our standard pricing. We do link building for Fortune 500 companies. We can't reveal our clients due to NDAs, but our friends on this thread will testify to what we can do. We have an actual office with real people who are not idiots (in fact they’re quite intelligent) that work together 5 days a week. So no, we won’t be beginning our emails to you with “Dear Sir”. We “get it” when it comes to link building and we understand ensuring the quality of every part of our process is of the utmost importance. From communication, to quality, to results. It’s all done right!
But enough with the sales speech, and lets look at some industry samples.
Refinancing for the Self-Employed | Mortgage Refinance - $40
The only thing really going for this guest post is the fact that the content is not obviously spun. Don’t get me wrong, there are grammar errors left, right and center. Also it’s a very uninspiring article on a very dubious site. The DA and PR are average, but it’s clear the site is not exactly a fountain of user activity.
Top 7 Fun Things to Do in Singapore | Dream Holiday Blog - $40
This look pretty good for $40 actually. Acceptable content, good use of images. Again, average DA and PR but overall the site looks decent. There are no social shares and worst of all, the link has been removed! Often bloggers who run their blog mainly with guest posts will remove links (presumably because they think this stops them leaking authority or something) a few months after the link is established.
3 Valuable Tips On How To Secure Your Cloud Storage - $50
So the extra $10 here seems to buy, well, not very much. The DA and PR here are higher than in the previous examples but the price was for DA 20+ guaranteed. Obviously in samples, companies tend to show good samples. What is disappointing is the poor quality, uninspiring content. It’s not ilegible but it doesn’t exactly want to make you keep reading it after the first paragraph. The comments are a joke. That happens sometimes but the responses by the author as a bit strange.
Internet Marketing Consultants – Great Ways for your Business to Flourish | Out4.com - $50
This guest post is really clutching for straws. At $50, you don’t even get a native english writer. This is content for the sake of content if I ever saw it. The DA and PR are mediocre (34/2 respectively) which is a little low for a sample. The design of the site is poor. When you see text instead of a logo, it’s a potential warning signal.
3 Reasons Why You Should Train With Weights - $60
Moving up to the $60 bracket, not much is really changing. The Article is average but very very basic with little or no creative flair. The DA and PR are both quite low (23/2 respectively) which makes me wonder what the extra cost really buys us here.
5 Benefits of Cloud Hosting You'll Go Crazy About | CBRdigital.com - $100
There is a rather large gap between $60-$100 price points. We couldn’t find many competitors that were in this range so jumping up to the $100 price point gets us….almost no difference. Ok the article is clearly written by a native english writer, but we’re still seeing it hosted on a blog which consists entirely of guest posts. There is also no meaningful social activity or engagement.
Planning a Luxury Road Trip - Road Sister - $110
This guest post is pretty good. $110 gets us good, native english content. There is a relevant stock image and even outbound contextual non-competitor links. The site design isn’t amazing and it does host quite a large percentage of guest posts, but it is not exclusively a guest posting site. The domain does have a small number of inbound links itself too. Do bear in mind that this is a sample, so one could expect this to reflect this better end of the spectrum.
All-Natural Immune System Boosters - $200
Jumping up massively to $200, we have this post. It is a very well targeted post for the industry and clearly written by a topic expert, as opposed to a general writer. The site is a very legitimate site for the industry with really good authority. The only thing lacking here is the poor social engagement. A bit of promotion to the right audiences could have really seen this post do well.
7 Ways to Promote your Site with a Bit of Money - $250
At a hefty $250, this is the most expensive guest post we found. The site clearly has a real user base as almost every article gets comments to it. Social engagement is great and the article is well written with a very good angle. Formatting issues aside, this is a great guest post which utilizes contextual outbound linking extremely well. The anchor text of the client is hard to guess as all the outbound links fit in very naturally.
Additionally, during our research we found that:
We learned that to serve both markets, we needed to split our product into two versions. A key feature for us was that all links should be presentable to end clients and avoid anything that could be construed as a “bad link”. We would always seek to avoid blog networks and paid links, even if those were passable as white hat for now.
So here are our two products:
Standard tier guest posts are for sites who need good links to pass authority. They are built with a links to be proud of mentality so any educated client should be happy with what they see here. To compare to our market study, these would typically compare to the $100-$110 range of posts (more if its to an agency client), so there is room to make a profit reselling these. Furthermore, we have the capacity and scale to output hundreds of these per month with no reduction in quality.
Everything you’d expect from our standard tier guest posts, plus more. These would typically compare to the $200-$250 level of posts that you see in our industry analysis except we got a lot further with the social promotion so they are potentially worth even more. A great reselling opportunity for those of you with big clients.
Since this is a custom service, we do not take premium guest post orders without approving the order first. See below for order instructions.
We initially did not intend to make any of our findings public. However we thought it would be the best way for people to understand our products and how they fit into the market.
But first, a little bit about us: We are medium sized agency with extra capacity. We are looking to fill our capacity to WickedFire members by offering it at a reduced rate over our standard pricing. We do link building for Fortune 500 companies. We can't reveal our clients due to NDAs, but our friends on this thread will testify to what we can do. We have an actual office with real people who are not idiots (in fact they’re quite intelligent) that work together 5 days a week. So no, we won’t be beginning our emails to you with “Dear Sir”. We “get it” when it comes to link building and we understand ensuring the quality of every part of our process is of the utmost importance. From communication, to quality, to results. It’s all done right!
But enough with the sales speech, and lets look at some industry samples.
9 industry sample guest posts
Refinancing for the Self-Employed | Mortgage Refinance - $40
The only thing really going for this guest post is the fact that the content is not obviously spun. Don’t get me wrong, there are grammar errors left, right and center. Also it’s a very uninspiring article on a very dubious site. The DA and PR are average, but it’s clear the site is not exactly a fountain of user activity.
Top 7 Fun Things to Do in Singapore | Dream Holiday Blog - $40
This look pretty good for $40 actually. Acceptable content, good use of images. Again, average DA and PR but overall the site looks decent. There are no social shares and worst of all, the link has been removed! Often bloggers who run their blog mainly with guest posts will remove links (presumably because they think this stops them leaking authority or something) a few months after the link is established.
3 Valuable Tips On How To Secure Your Cloud Storage - $50
So the extra $10 here seems to buy, well, not very much. The DA and PR here are higher than in the previous examples but the price was for DA 20+ guaranteed. Obviously in samples, companies tend to show good samples. What is disappointing is the poor quality, uninspiring content. It’s not ilegible but it doesn’t exactly want to make you keep reading it after the first paragraph. The comments are a joke. That happens sometimes but the responses by the author as a bit strange.
Internet Marketing Consultants – Great Ways for your Business to Flourish | Out4.com - $50
This guest post is really clutching for straws. At $50, you don’t even get a native english writer. This is content for the sake of content if I ever saw it. The DA and PR are mediocre (34/2 respectively) which is a little low for a sample. The design of the site is poor. When you see text instead of a logo, it’s a potential warning signal.
3 Reasons Why You Should Train With Weights - $60
Moving up to the $60 bracket, not much is really changing. The Article is average but very very basic with little or no creative flair. The DA and PR are both quite low (23/2 respectively) which makes me wonder what the extra cost really buys us here.
5 Benefits of Cloud Hosting You'll Go Crazy About | CBRdigital.com - $100
There is a rather large gap between $60-$100 price points. We couldn’t find many competitors that were in this range so jumping up to the $100 price point gets us….almost no difference. Ok the article is clearly written by a native english writer, but we’re still seeing it hosted on a blog which consists entirely of guest posts. There is also no meaningful social activity or engagement.
Planning a Luxury Road Trip - Road Sister - $110
This guest post is pretty good. $110 gets us good, native english content. There is a relevant stock image and even outbound contextual non-competitor links. The site design isn’t amazing and it does host quite a large percentage of guest posts, but it is not exclusively a guest posting site. The domain does have a small number of inbound links itself too. Do bear in mind that this is a sample, so one could expect this to reflect this better end of the spectrum.
All-Natural Immune System Boosters - $200
Jumping up massively to $200, we have this post. It is a very well targeted post for the industry and clearly written by a topic expert, as opposed to a general writer. The site is a very legitimate site for the industry with really good authority. The only thing lacking here is the poor social engagement. A bit of promotion to the right audiences could have really seen this post do well.
7 Ways to Promote your Site with a Bit of Money - $250
At a hefty $250, this is the most expensive guest post we found. The site clearly has a real user base as almost every article gets comments to it. Social engagement is great and the article is well written with a very good angle. Formatting issues aside, this is a great guest post which utilizes contextual outbound linking extremely well. The anchor text of the client is hard to guess as all the outbound links fit in very naturally.
What can we summarize from these examples?
- There is a correlation between quality and price, but only when significant price differences occur
- The sites used are, generally, very similar at all price levels except the highest.
- Content above $100 is generally, though not always, pretty good.
- Social promotion is generally poor, even at higher price levels
Additionally, during our research we found that:
- Not a single supplier gave us any samples where we did not already have the site in our link partner database.
- When the expensive suppliers spoke to us, they wanted to become our clients and outsource their work to us.
- There seems to be a sort of grey hat / white hat split in terms of approach to guest posting with some people just looking for anchor rich links on sites with authority but others looking for white hat in the truest definition of the word.
We learned that to serve both markets, we needed to split our product into two versions. A key feature for us was that all links should be presentable to end clients and avoid anything that could be construed as a “bad link”. We would always seek to avoid blog networks and paid links, even if those were passable as white hat for now.
So here are our two products:
Standard Tier Guest Post - $70
Standard tier guest posts are for sites who need good links to pass authority. They are built with a links to be proud of mentality so any educated client should be happy with what they see here. To compare to our market study, these would typically compare to the $100-$110 range of posts (more if its to an agency client), so there is room to make a profit reselling these. Furthermore, we have the capacity and scale to output hundreds of these per month with no reduction in quality.
- DA 20+ guaranteed (average DA 35, across the last 1000 posts)
- 4 week delivery time
- Choose your own anchor text (keep it natural or branded if you want higher quality sites. strictly no unnatural anchors)
- Content brainstorming to match target sites
- Well researched, native english content
- Links to be proud of - Well formatted articles with images (where permitted).
- Contextual outbound non-competitor linking
- No Black hat blog networks or paid sites
- Sites are manually outreached by our team of link prospectors.
Premium Guest Post - $140
Everything you’d expect from our standard tier guest posts, plus more. These would typically compare to the $200-$250 level of posts that you see in our industry analysis except we got a lot further with the social promotion so they are potentially worth even more. A great reselling opportunity for those of you with big clients.
- High DA sites. 35+ (average DA50, across the last 60 posts)
- 6 week delivery time
- Genuine active sites with active user engagement
- Exceptional content written by niche specific native english topic experts.
- Manual social promotion to relevant outlets such as FB/G+ communities, sub-reddits, stumbleupon (our premium posts earn on average 90 genuine likes/tweets/shares per post)
Since this is a custom service, we do not take premium guest post orders without approving the order first. See below for order instructions.
