HARO - Help a Reporter Out - Actual Experiences?

Samwise89

Samwise89

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I joined HARO about six months ago and have responded ASAP to a lot of leads but never even got a courtesy response. Some of these took a lot of effort. It's soured me on the whole thing.

Today, as I deleted the three emails I was wondering about other people. Have you guys made this work out?

I read elsewhere that it's even better to sign up as the advertiser and network with all the people sending in requests. You're paying HARO to filter out motivated webmasters.
 
2 things have worked for me:

1. Lie. Outright lie about who / what you are, say you represent a client that is the TOP DAWG in the industry, get a response (mr xyz is very busy, but if you're interested in having xyz offer a quote, let me know) and then pull the bait and switch and say he was not able to, but you have this other guy who can offer a very similar quote.

2. Do the reverse and ask for experts for your site (you have to be sub 100k alexa, which is a ridiculous metric, but can be gamed). Then get them to tweet / link back and you're good to go.


Edit: If you don't already know, the main lists are terrible. So many ballers there eating up the good stuff, so you need to look at profnet / haro urgent stuff on twitter and their forums. These have super tight deadlines and 1/100 of the eyballs on them.
 
I've been thinking about using HARO as a source for one of newer my projects. I've got to do things as if I'm new again. Worse case scenario if they don't use my content I can re-purpose it as a blog post. I'm going to add this to my calendar for outreach and content creation.

dresden said:
so you need to look at profnet / haro urgent stuff on twitter and their forums. These have super tight deadlines and 1/100 of the eyballs on them.
Click to expand...

^^ thanks for that tip mate.
 
I've been using HARO sporadically for the past few months. Here's my preliminary results.

Pitches responded to: 74
Links received: 8
AHRefs DR Range: 35 - 80

For the time invested it's a pretty great return. The links would've cost me at least $2,000.

74 responses, if you guess it takes 15 minutes on average to respond to one, that's 19 hours of work. Is my time worth $100/hour? Sure.
 
i've had similar results to @mikeb23

roughly 10% returns with a big range in DRs from 20s to the highest being some major blogs. Some nofollow features in a number of major publications/news reports. also made some friends out of it

I do a quick skim for something that's directly in my niche every day and only look for direct fits.

admittedly i think my niche is less competitive though. it's not a ton of links, but a nice supplement to other link building for little time. i know some who use VAs to filter through.
 
HARO got me 4 backlinks from the ~35 queries I responded to in Nov/ Dec. I only spent maybe 5-6 minutes per reply since they were in my niche which I know inside out. Avg word-count per reply was less than 200 words.

I usually check the DR before replying so the links I got were from DR 65+ sites except one which was DR 18 because it was marked "anonymous" lol. Although considering my low time spent per reply, I shouldn't be picky I guess.

I stopped doing HARO after that one month though because I am getting far better backlinks simply by reaching out to people in my industry. One of the perks of starting a website in your day-job industry :smile:
 
There are HARO service providers and they are actually cost effective.

This is one:
This service is structured as results-only, with a flat fee of $425 per DR 50+, dofollow placement. Each month, we invoice for the previous month's live links - so, you only ever pay for results that are already live.

This is another:
Prize bands are from $2,500 for 10 links in digital, 3k travel, 4k finance. 5-6k would be crypto and cbd etc
 
I've maybe been lucky or something, but I've had a ton of success with HARO.

Out of 66 pitches I've got 20 links: including Reader's Digest, Livestrong, Huffington Post, AskMen, etc. Though I am quite picky with what queries I pitch to, and not all links are DoFollow. Many of these were related to my niche (Home & Garden) but I'm sure I could replicate for other sites.

For those answering queries, a few tips from me:
1. Make sure you're tracking your pitches. When you pitch, note the site and where the article would probably be published - check back later. Most of the time you won't get told you've been included.
2. Set alarms for post timings. You often need to be fast.
3. Be picky. Don't waste time going for a pitch you can't provide value for.
4. Make it quotable. Journalists want to paste a paragraph into their article. Give them that paragraph as a standalone quote, ideally in bold. Walls of text will get ignored.
5. Catch their attention. Have a witty subject, start with their name, connect on the topic if you can.
6. Get to the point. No-one cares about your credentials apart from a quick check before they link. Lead with a quick hello then give them what they want.
7. Provide actual value. People know bullshit when they see it. Give them actual valuable responses. Even if it's just the results gained from some quick googling.
 
MinstrelJunkie said:
1. Make sure you're tracking your pitches. When you pitch, note the site and where the article would probably be published - check back later. Most of the time you won't get told you've been included.
2. Set alarms for post timings. You often need to be fast.
3. Be picky. Don't waste time going for a pitch you can't provide value for.
4. Make it quotable. Journalists want to paste a paragraph into their article. Give them that paragraph as a standalone quote, ideally in bold. Walls of text will get ignored.
5. Catch their attention. Have a witty subject, start with their name, connect on the topic if you can.
6. Get to the point. No-one cares about your credentials apart from a quick check before they link. Lead with a quick hello then give them what they want.
7. Provide actual value. People know bullshit when they see it. Give them actual valuable responses. Even if it's just the results gained from some quick googling.
Click to expand...

Copy that. This is almost a summary of my HARO approach. As of today, I've send 400+ replies for 20+ websites and gained 88 links with an average DA of ~52. It works.
 
MinstrelJunkie said:
I've maybe been lucky or something, but I've had a ton of success with HARO.

Out of 66 pitches I've got 20 links: including Reader's Digest, Livestrong, Huffington Post, AskMen, etc. Though I am quite picky with what queries I pitch to, and not all links are DoFollow. Many of these were related to my niche (Home & Garden) but I'm sure I could replicate for other sites.

For those answering queries, a few tips from me:
1. Make sure you're tracking your pitches. When you pitch, note the site and where the article would probably be published - check back later. Most of the time you won't get told you've been included.
2. Set alarms for post timings. You often need to be fast.
3. Be picky. Don't waste time going for a pitch you can't provide value for.
4. Make it quotable. Journalists want to paste a paragraph into their article. Give them that paragraph as a standalone quote, ideally in bold. Walls of text will get ignored.
5. Catch their attention. Have a witty subject, start with their name, connect on the topic if you can.
6. Get to the point. No-one cares about your credentials apart from a quick check before they link. Lead with a quick hello then give them what they want.
7. Provide actual value. People know bullshit when they see it. Give them actual valuable responses. Even if it's just the results gained from some quick googling.
Click to expand...

This is great, one thing we've noticed helps is having a fully built out Signature with Headshot link and all social profiles (LinkedIN, Twitter, email, etc). Make sure headshot is large enough to use if they need it, usually 500x500 px

Respond from an email that is from the Domain you want links to that is branded (firstname.lastname@yourdomain.com) as well.

Sometimes they'll mention your quote and brand, but wont link - We've had success emailing the writer and asking them for a link back to the article, something like this:

Hey [writers name]!

I saw your piece on rd.com ( [link to the article they wrote] ). Really well written piece! I'm glad I could contribute. Is there any way you could link back to [your domain brand name, not url] from within the piece? I'd greatly appreciate it.

Cheers,

This seemed to get the link added without much effort!

Thanks!
 
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