Ten minutes of setup. 7 live placements, about $188 each.
A mid-sized digital product design and development studio pasted a list of 1,611 URLs into GEOboom and added its website address. GEOboom ran the link building and mention outreach to the agency rankings its buyers read. Seven placements are now live on sites rated DR 34 to 78; the studio’s part is approving offers and paying publishers.
- 10 minof the client's time to set up and launch
- 7placements live on DR 34–78 sites
- $188per live placement, software and publisher fees together
- ~2 ha month on offers and payments from here on
- Client
- A mid-sized digital product design and development studio: product and UI/UX design, web and mobile development, design team augmentation. Name withheld at the client’s request.
- Goal
- Be listed on the agency rankings buyers and AI assistants read: “top product design companies”, “best web design agencies”, staffing rankings.
- Input
- A list of 1,611 URLs and the website address. No brief, no new content, no agency.
- Timeline
- A test run in September, running in its current form since 1 October. Numbers as of 29 October 2026.
- Publishers
- 326 contacted, 40 replied (12%), 13 offers. Five paid placements from $25 to $400 and two exchanges are live.
- Cost
- About $363 for two months at list price, plus $950 in publisher fees: about $188 a live placement.
URLs pasted in 1,611
free · AI read every page
Fit for the brand 646
free · pages where a design studio does not belong dropped
Publishers 339
free · one conversation each, however many pages
Contacted 326
paid · 326 × $0.50 = $163
Placements live 7
13 offers from 40 replies (12%)
Importing, reading and filtering are free: 965 of the 1,611 URLs were dropped before any email and never cost a cent.
Before and with GEOboom
Doing it by hand
- An outreach specialist or an agency on the payroll
- Weeks of finding the right rankings and the right editor
- Prices, exchanges and follow-ups tracked in a spreadsheet
- Cold email from the studio’s own domain
- Nobody checking whether a placement is still live, and still dofollow
Ten minutes, then approvals
- Nobody hired: one person approves offers and pays
- Every page read and grouped by publisher before the first email
- Each offer arrives with DR, price, a drafted reply and a deal record
- Sent from GEOboom’s warmed-up mailboxes, never your domain
- Live placements checked against the deal, and the publisher written to when one changes
Bring your list. Ten minutes to launch.
Your first emails go out the day your account opens; offers start coming the next day.
The client and the goal
The client is a mid-sized digital product studio: product and UI/UX design, web and mobile development, and design team augmentation, mostly for startups. It competes with hundreds of design and development agencies for the same buyers.
Its goal was to be listed on the pages those buyers read when they shortlist an agency: “top product design companies”, “best web design agencies”, “top IT staffing agencies” and rankings like them. AI assistants draw on the same pages when somebody asks them for an agency. Most of those pages belong to publishers, and many of those publishers sell or trade a spot on them. Getting onto them is link building and mention outreach: find the page, find the person, ask, agree the terms, pay or exchange — and then check that the placement stays as agreed.
The studio wanted that done without hiring an outreach specialist.
What the client put in
Three things, and about ten minutes of one person’s time.
- A list of 1,611 URLs. Pages that already list the client’s competitors: agency rankings, “top 10” posts, vendor roundups. It went in for a test run in September, and the campaign has run in its current form since 1 October.
- The company’s website address. Nothing else to write. GEOboom reads the site itself and builds the outreach from it.
- Ten minutes. Setup, the paste, pressing start.
What the client did not do: write a pitch, hire an agency, search for contacts, buy from a link marketplace, or set up mailboxes.
How GEOboom ran it
Six steps. The client did the first and the last; GEOboom did everything in between.
- ClientPaste the list and press start10 min1,611 URLs and the website address.
- GEOboomRead every pageAll 1,611 pages read against the client's site; 646 kept, where a design studio belongs.
- GEOboomGroup by publisher339 publishers, one conversation each, however many of their pages are on the list.
- GEOboomFind the personUp to three editorial contacts per publisher. 326 contacted so far.
- GEOboomAsk, follow up, checkA short question about paid placement, sent from warmed-up mailboxes, with follow-ups until a reply — and a daily check on every placement once it is live.
- ClientApprove the offers~2 h / monthEach reply lands in one inbox with the publisher's DR, the offer, a drafted answer and a deal record. Approve, pay, or put up the partner's link for an exchange.
Why the offers are relevant
The filtering happened before the first email went out, not after the replies came in.
Dropped · 965 URLs
- Pages where a design studio does not fit
- Competitor sites and blogs
- Link farms, thin directories
- Pages that already mention the client
Read against the client’s own site. Nothing here gets an email or costs a credit.
Kept · 646 URLs, 339 publishers
- Agency rankings in the client’s market
- Product design, UX, web design, staffing
- “Top … agencies” lists and roundups
- One conversation per publisher
The pages a buyer or an AI answer reads before shortlisting an agency.
Proof · what came back
- Top IT staffing agencies · DR 78
- Web design agencies · DR 62
- Top product design companies · DR 53
- Best UX design agencies · DR 15
Every offer is on a page where the client fits.
Marketplaces and done-for-you services sell you their catalogue of sites, assembled before you arrived. GEOboom starts from your market: it reads every page against your own site and writes only where a mention of you makes sense.
What publishers actually offered
The inbox on 29 October, filtered to publishers who replied: paid list placements from $25 to $400, swaps of positions or links, and one refusal. Each row carries the publisher’s DR, the next action and the state of the deal.
Three of those threads, as they stand.
A “top IT staffing agencies” list could not be reordered, but offered position 12. The client's text went in, the publisher wrote “your link is now live”, and the invoice was paid.
A web design agencies list offers position 9 for $200, and starts as soon as the payment clears. One of the six still in negotiation.
The publisher put the client's dofollow link up first and is now asking for its own: “from our end it's already done yesterday”.
None of these threads needed a person to find the page, find the contact or write the opening email. The client’s part starts at the reply.
Seven placements live, and what comes next
Five paid placements and two exchanges, on pages that rank agencies like the client’s. Every deal is written down once it is agreed: what each side gives, whether it is live, and when GEOboom last checked it.
| Publisher | DR | Placement | Terms | On 29 October |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo Technical | 78 | “Top IT staffing agencies”, position 12 | $75 | Live |
| Marketing LTB | 76 | Sponsored placement | $250 | Live |
| WPWebElite | 58 | Placement | $200 | Live |
| Listaaj | 53 | List placement | $25 | Live |
| Excited | 53 | “Top product design companies” | Exchange | Live, but switched to nofollow — flagged Broken |
| Striped Horse | 36 | Sponsored listing, position 2 | $400 | Live |
| Krishang Technolab | 34 | Link in a blog article | Exchange | Live on the publisher's side; ours still to go up |
The deal list counts five Live and one Broken — the exchange whose link was switched to nofollow — and it holds an eighth deal that is not a placement yet: $150 agreed with a DR 19 publisher, awaiting payment. The seventh live placement, the DR 34 exchange, is live on the publisher’s side and its deal record is still being written, which is why it is not in this list.
How to read these numbers. This was one of the first campaigns run on GEOboom, and every publisher got the same direct question: do you offer paid placement on this page? Sites that do not sell placements mostly stayed silent, which is what keeps the reply rate at 12%. The ones who did answer named a price, an exchange or a no, so 7 of the 13 offers are already signed deals. Campaigns started later pitch each page with a reason the client belongs on it; one of those got 30 offers from 215 publishers in ten days.
The client’s work from here is about two hours a month: approving offers, paying publishers and putting up links back for exchanges. Six more offers are in negotiation and 13 publishers are still in the queue. When one publisher switched the client’s link to nofollow, GEOboom wrote to them the same day; the daily check that catches that is the subject of its own case study, on another client’s placement.
We will update this page as more placements go live.
What a campaign like this costs
At list price, two months of this campaign come to about $363 for GEOboom, plus $950 in publisher fees for the five paid placements: about $188 a live placement, all in.
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Plan | $150 a month: 50 credits, 3 warmed-up mailboxes, unlimited users and projects, SEO data and placement monitoring included |
| Each publisher GEOboom writes to | 0.5 credit ($0.50), with every contact at that domain and all follow-ups included |
| Extra credits | $1 each |
| This campaign: 326 publishers over two months | 163 credits: 100 included in two months of the plan, 63 extra. About $363 |
| Publisher fees | Paid by the client to the publisher directly. Here $25 to $400 a placement, $950 for the five; the two exchanges cost nothing |
| Per live placement | About $188: $363 + $950, over seven placements |
The same work through other routes, by our estimate: a link-building VA costs $900 to $1,400 a month plus 15 to 30 hours of managing them; an outreach tool plus your own team starts at $250 to $660 a month on a 12-month contract plus 40 to 70 hours of work; reseller links run around $350 each, on sites the reseller picks. Figures from the GEOboom pricing page, October 2026.
What to apply, whether or not you use GEOboom
A reply rate says how many people answered. What you are buying is a live placement on a page your buyers read, so divide everything you spent by that number and compare it with what a link costs anywhere else.
Asking “do you offer paid placement?” gets fewer replies, but most of them arrive with a price, so deals close quicker. Pitch the page itself when you want exchanges and free mentions as well.
Links get switched to nofollow and anchors get rewritten when a publisher updates a post. Agree the terms in writing, and check them on a schedule rather than when you happen to remember.
Questions, answered
Something missing? .
How much does a link placement cost with GEOboom?
In this campaign, about $188 a live placement all in: $363 for two months of GEOboom at list price plus $950 in publisher fees, over seven placements. Publisher fees depend on the site; here they ran from $25 to $400, and the two exchanges cost nothing.
Are the placements in this case study live?
Yes, seven on 29 October 2026: five paid and two exchanges. One of the exchanges is flagged because the publisher switched the link to nofollow, and GEOboom has already written to them; on the other, the publisher has published the client's link and the client's link back is still to go up.
Why is the reply rate 12%?
This was one of the first GEOboom campaigns, and it asked every publisher one direct question about paid placement. Publishers who do not sell placements mostly did not answer, so fewer replies came back — but most of those that did named a price or an exchange. The rate is counted against the 326 publishers contacted, not the 1,611 URLs in the list.
Who pays the publishers?
The client, directly. GEOboom's price covers finding the page, finding the person, writing, following up and tracking what was agreed; publisher fees are separate.
Do I need to write a brief for link building outreach?
No. The client gave its list and its website address. GEOboom read the site and built the outreach from it.
Whose mailboxes send the outreach emails?
GEOboom's. Each account gets its own warmed-up mailboxes; the client's domain is not used for cold outreach.
How this case study was prepared
The campaign described here runs in a live GEOboom account. All numbers are taken from the account's campaign dashboard, deal list and inbox on 29 October 2026. The list was imported in September for a test run; the campaign has run in its current form since 1 October. Screenshots are cropped to the relevant part of the screen; the client's name, GEOboom's sending addresses and the names and email addresses of people at publishers are blurred, and publisher sites are shown as they appear. A placement is counted as live when the client's link is on the publisher's page, which is why the seven here are one more than the five the deal list marks Live: the section above says what each of the seven is. The client asked not to be named. Prices are GEOboom's public list prices in October 2026 and may change.
Oleksii Andrusenkoco-founder of GEOboom, CEO of GrowPad. Updated October 29, 2026.