Publishing on hearthstats.org — metrics, brief and price

Mid-market at $60: the band where judgement about the site matters more than the invoice.

There is a second job these placements do that is worth naming: they make a young or thin profile look normal. A domain that acquires 34-level links from a spread of ordinary publications, in drips, over months, looks like a business that has been around. A domain that acquires forty links from aggressive networks in a fortnight looks like a campaign, and it is the pattern rather than the individual link that gets noticed.

Within the General section of the index — 1,576 listings, 39 median DA, 5k median traffic, $70 median price — this placement is 14% below the median on cost and roughly 24% of the index median on audience. Listings in that section range from $30 at the cheap end, so the question is not whether $60 is high for a link, but whether it is high for this one.

Generalist inventory also varies more than any other kind, which is why the numbers in this brief matter more than the label. A 34 DA domain with 1.3k estimated monthly visits and Do-follow links is a different product from the same DA with a tenth of the traffic, and they are priced too close together in most catalogues.

Our observation on this host is do-follow outbound links in editorial content. That is the attribute, not the value: the 34 DA and 1.3k monthly visits are what the attribute is attached to.

Two comparisons decide whether hearthstats.org at $60 is a good buy: this listing against the 1,576 other General entries we index, and against the whole 2,000-site index. The gap between those two answers is where a price is either justified or inherited from a rate card nobody revisited.

Two things the metrics cannot tell you, so we say them plainly: whether the host will still accept a contribution article this month, and whether the section your piece lands in is crawled weekly or monthly. Everything else on this page — 34 DA, 32 PA, 51 DR, 1,300 visits, $60, do-follow — is measured, dated September 2026, and available to you before you commit.

hearthstats.org out-ranks 19% of the index on audience size (roughly 24% of the index median) and 11% on authority. The placement costs $46.15 per thousand estimated visits, and mid-priced for a site carrying DA 30-39. Those two figures, not the DA column alone, decide whether $60 is a good trade or just a listed one.

• New domains that need a plausible first set of citations before anything ambitious.
• Thin profiles where diversity matters more than raw authority.
• Anyone testing guest posting before committing to a premium title.
• Do not buy this if your profile has no branded searches yet and this is meant to be the single link that changes that. One 34 DA placement on a General site is a start, not a strategy.
• Do not buy this if the site's topical distance from your market needs three paragraphs of explanation. Relevance has to be obvious to a crawler reading the neighbourhood.

Pitch angle: a local or regional piece with detail a generalist cannot fake. That is the shape we take to a General audience, because it is the version the host's own editor has a reason to keep.

• Keep the tone flat No superlatives, no promises about outcomes, no invented before-and-after. The style that survives editorial review in General is the style that sounds like someone reporting on their own work.
• Add a heading someone would search A question-style H2 phrased the way the reader phrases it. This is what lets the article rank on its own, which is the difference between a placement that gets crawled weekly and one that gets crawled yearly.
• Include one thing nobody else has A table, a chart, a worked example, a photograph you took. This is what earns the citations that make the $60 look cheap a year later.

Anchor plan for this host

• if you already have links from similar sites, vary the anchor shape entirely
• no two anchors to the same target page from one article

• Anchor history. We pull the anchors other sites have bought there. If the last twenty were all money phrases, a brand anchor from you will look natural, which is the rare and useful direction.
• Link attribute on a live example. Not the pitch, not the rate card: the rel attribute on an outbound link in a real article published this month.
• Editorial activity. A site with 1.3k monthly visits and nothing published in six months is a decaying asset, and decaying assets get dropped from the index in batches.
• Whether the exact placement URL is indexable. A 34 DA domain happily serves noindexed contributor pages. We read the robots meta tag on the article template, not on the homepage.

1. You send the target URL and your angle The page you want the link to point at, the subject, and any author you want credited. Five minutes of input.
2. We confirm availability on hearthstats.org Publisher slots move week to week, including on 34 DA properties. Nothing is promised until the section and the placement URL are confirmed, and we tell you before you pay if the slot has gone.
3. You approve the brief and the shortlist Where the host gives a choice of section or existing article, we send options with the numbers that matter: traffic, indexation, neighbours.
4. The article is drafted and edited for the host Written for hearthstats.org's audience rather than for your keyword, then checked against the site's own style before submission.
5. The host publishes; we verify the live URL Placement live, correct target, link attribute as recorded, indexable. Only then does the order count as delivered.
6. You get the report, and the replacement cover starts PDF and CSV with the live URL, anchor, placement date and target page. Twelve-month replacement on the link itself, no ticket required.

The quoted $60 is our standard rate for this listing at the time of the September 2026 snapshot. Two things move it: whether the host still has contributor capacity that month, and whether the slot you want is a standalone article or a paragraph inside an existing page (niche edits on the same property are typically cheaper and faster).

What comes with this placement

• Availability confirmed on the exact URL before you are invoiced.
• 12-month replacement cover: if the link drops, we rebuild it.
• White-label PDF + CSV report — forward it to a client unchanged.
• The article itself, drafted to the host's style and edited before submission.

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