What to do when a site asks for money for a link

A reply with a price is not a problem with your email. It is how much of the web works. You have four options: offer something other than money, pay for a labelled link, pay for an unlabelled one and accept the policy risk, or decline. Which one you take should already be written in your link policy before the reply arrives.

Why it happens so often

Publishers in commercial niches receive link requests every day and many have turned them into income. In a test by Ahrefs, which emailed 180 sites with “write for us” pages across nine niches, 25.5% replied and about half of those asked for a fee. The average was $77.80. In a second test of 450 sites, 12.6% were willing to sell a link in an existing article, at an average of $361.44. Ahrefs last updated the article in July 2024 and the tests are older.

Buying is common on the other side too. In uSERP’s September 2026 survey of 116 senior SEOs, 35.3% said they had paid for sponsored backlinks in the past 12 months.

What the policy says

Google’s spam policies, last updated in August 2026, list “buying or selling links for ranking purposes” as link spam. That includes money, goods or services given for a link. The exception is a paid link that carries rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow", which Google treats as advertising. Link attributes explains the difference.

So the question the site has asked you is really two questions. Will you pay, and if so, will the link be labelled?

Your four options

Option	What it means	Policy position	Typical result
Offer other value	Replace money with a resource, data, a quote or promotion	Compliant	Some editors accept, many repeat the price
Pay, with a sponsored attribute	Treat it as advertising	Compliant	Brand exposure and referral traffic. Ranking credit is not the purpose
Pay, no attribute	A bought followed link	Breaks Google’s link spam policy	May help, may be ignored, adds risk to the profile
Decline	Thank them and move on	Compliant	Time saved for better prospects

No option is wrong for every site. A licensed brand with a domain it cannot afford to lose will usually stay in rows one, two and four. An affiliate in a market where every competitor buys will read the table differently. White hat, grey hat and black hat link building sets out that range.

Vet the site before you discuss the price

A price changes what you know about the site. It tells you the site sells links, which means it sells them to others. Check how it does that before anything else.

• Speed and format of the reply. A price list, a menu of “5 sites” or a spreadsheet sent within minutes points to a seller, not an editor.
• Outbound links. Open five recent posts. Count commercial links with exact-match anchors.
• Off-topic content. Casino, CBD or loan articles on an unrelated site show that anyone can buy.
• Traffic. BuzzStream’s June 2026 study found that 39.6% of guest post sellers had no organic traffic.

If the site fails, the price is irrelevant. How to vet a publisher has the full method. The most common loss in paid links is not a penalty. It is money spent on a link that Google ignores.

One more warning. Be suspicious of a seller who cannot change the text around a link or will not name an editorial contact. Some cheap “placements” are links injected into compromised sites, as described in hacked and cloaked links.

If you will not pay

Reply once. Say you do not pay for placements and restate what you can give. The standard value exchanges in outreach are a better or newer resource, a fix for a broken link, exclusive data, an expert quote, free access to a tool or product, or promotion in your newsletter or social channels.

Note that goods and services given in return for a followed link are also covered by Google’s policy. A free product is not a way around it.

Then tag the prospect in your tracker as “asked for payment” with the price. That record is useful later, and it stops a colleague pitching the same site.

If you will pay

Treat it as a purchase with terms, not a favour.

1. Get approval. The policy should name who can approve a paid link and the maximum price for a site of that quality.
2. Negotiate. Adsy’s analysis of 37,542 sites, using 2024 data, found that at DR 41 to 50 sellers asked $406 on average and buyers paid $59. For reference, BuzzStream’s June 2026 data puts a guest post bought direct at $295 on average.
3. Agree terms in writing. How long the link stays, which attribute it carries, whether the article is labelled as sponsored, and what happens if it is removed.
4. Check before paying. The link is in the rendered page, the page is indexable, and it can be reached from the site’s navigation.
5. Log it with cost, date and approver.

Expect better sites to insist on a label. ESBO’s September 2026 analysis of 16,625 publishers found that 57% of premium publishers label sponsored content, against 15% of budget publishers. How to buy backlinks safely covers the full buying process, and paid guest posts covers the format itself.

Disclosure is a separate rule

Advertising law applies to paid content whatever its SEO purpose. Regulators such as the FTC in the US and the ASA in the UK expect paid content to be identifiable as such. In regulated sectors like gambling and finance, the copy usually needs compliance sign-off as well. A publisher that offers to hide the commercial nature of an article is offering you a legal risk along with the link. This is general information, not legal advice.

Markets differ

How a request for money is made depends on the country. Ahrefs’ 2023 article on international link building quotes a practitioner who said that outreach in India with “paid post” in the subject line can convert at more than 20%, and reports that followed links are hard to obtain in Germany, where many sites link out only with nofollow. International link building has the detail by market.

Set the rule once

Deciding case by case leads to inconsistent prices and unrecorded risk. Write the rule down: which domains may carry paid links, who approves, what the ceiling is, and whether a sponsored attribute is required. Link buying policy and governance gives a structure.

Where to go next

If you want to compare what vendors charge for the same kind of placement, see the link marketplaces comparison. Terms such as sponsored attribute and niche edit are defined in the glossary.