112 journalist queries answered, 9 links, $0 spent

112 journalist queries answered, 9 links, $0 spent

B2B consultant, journalist-request platform only, n=112 responses over 60 days, tracked by one person spending ~5 hours/week.

Conversion funnel:
— 112 queries answered
— 14 quotes used in articles (12.5%)
— 9 included a live backlink (8.0% of responses)
— Median DR of placed links: 74

At 40 hours of labor for 9 links, effective cost was ~$178/link at a $40 rate — competitive with paid outreach but at DR 74 median, far above outreach's DR 49.

The catch: 5 of 14 published quotes had no link, just a brand mention. We later reclaimed 3 of those as unlinked mentions.

Track 'quoted but unlinked' separately — it's a second free link-reclamation pipeline.