Industry's Standard $380 Guest Post Price Masks Two Wildly Different Markets

A digital PR agency owner analyzed a proprietary database of 16,625 publisher sites across 53 languages, built since 2015, and found that the widely cited $380 median price for English sponsored articles is statistically misleading. Splitting sites by reader geography rather than publishing language revealed two distinct populations: English sites targeting US, UK, and similar audiences had a median price of $593, while those targeting readers in countries like India had a median of just $150. The $380 figure sits in an empty valley between these two groups, meaning budgeting from it causes simultaneous overpaying in one market and underbidding in another. A second unexpected finding showed that nofollow-only links — traditionally considered low-value — carried a median price of $1,840, compared to $510 for dofollow placements, because top publishers sell audience reach rather than SEO signals. The researcher published the full findings, with sample sizes, at ESBO Ltd, emphasizing the danger of relying on aggregate statistics without first examining the underlying distribution.