Link Building Pricing: $160/hr, Not a Cost per Link
Justin Davis has been building backlinks since 2015. Link Builders is his white-hat practice, with more than 150 clients, running custom AI link building agents that handle prospecting, Boolean search, and contact finding at roughly ten times manual throughput. The aim is links and mentions that help clients rank in Google and get cited in AI answers.
Two ways to work together: buy a customized agent and own it, or rent hours on Justin’s machine while Justin and the Link Builders team run the work with you. The cards below are the whole offer.
Buy the machine or rent the hours
One-time
Buy the Machine
$9,600
Own a custom AI link building agent built around your niches, quality thresholds, and approval rules. The build includes onboarding and one 8-hour prospecting cycle: competitor analysis, Boolean prospecting, qualification, your approval, contact finding, and an outreach-ready list. You own the agent. There is no hourly fee for the agent and no per-link fee from us. You run it in-house after that. Details are on the AI Link Building Agent page.
Prepaid hours
Rent the machine
$4,800
30 hours at $160/hr
Paid in full up front. About half the hours go to prospecting. The rest go to working positive replies into placements. Justin and the Link Builders team run it. This is how most new relationships start.
Publisher fees are separate and passed through at cost.
Buy the Machine 30 hours on Justin’s Machine Talk to Justin
Buy the Machine is $9,600 one-time. Rent is 30 hours at $160/hr ($4,800), paid in full up front.
For agency partners who resell delivery under their brand, see link building for agencies (hours, not links), and how to resell those hours under your own price.
Pricing for GEO work
GEO off-site work is billed the same way: $160 an hour, and most clients start with the 30-hour block ($4,800), paid in full up front. The first hours go to the prompt baseline, the cited-page map and the technical check, then outreach to the pages that matter most. There are no monthly GEO packages and no per-citation prices. Publisher fees are passed through at cost, and there is no guarantee of AI citations. The full scope is on the GEO agency page.
Why not price links one by one?
Most link building is priced per link. That pays the vendor to walk past the expensive opportunity that would actually move rankings, because the margin on it is too thin. Renting hours removes that incentive. Nothing we charge depends on which link gets built, so the work goes after the best available opportunity, including sites that do not sell placements. This is not a marketplace of freelancers. It runs on Justin’s process and tooling. If you’re comparing vendors who quote per link, my guide to choosing a link building service explains what a per-link price bundles and what to ask.
If you are comparing vendors, ask how a link building company prices the work: hourly capacity keeps the incentive on the best opportunities, not the cheapest placements.
What you can count on, and what nobody can promise
Every competitor backlink profile is analyzed. Every Boolean search runs 20 pages deep and is deduplicated against domains already compiled or contacted, so the same site is not worked twice. You approve every site before outreach and every piece of content before it publishes. There are no recycled lists and no private blog networks.
Nobody can honestly promise rankings, traffic, a specific number of links, or a cap on what a given link will cost. Anyone quoting those numbers is quoting a sales figure, not a forecast. There is no ranking guarantee and no link-count guarantee.
Frequently asked questions
What is Link Builders?
Link Builders is Justin Davis’s white-hat link building practice. He has been building backlinks since 2015. The work earns backlinks and citations: links and brand mentions on the sites Google ranks and the pages ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews cite, with the goal of helping clients show up in both regular and AI search. The two ways to work together are the cards above: own a custom AI link building agent, or rent hours while Justin and the Link Builders team run the work. Full definition: https://link-builders.com/about-link-builders/
What is the difference between buying the machine and renting hours?
Buying means an agent is built around your niche and you run it in-house after that, including one prospecting cycle. Renting means Justin and the Link Builders team run it on his machine, with the hours split between prospecting and turning positive replies into placements. Most new relationships start by renting, then buy the agent when they want the system in-house. What each option includes is on the two cards above.
What are publisher fees?
A publisher fee is what a site charges to run a placement. It is separate from both offers. You see the number and decide which placements are worth it.
Does the backlink target list include AI sources?
Yes. Link Builders now adds the pages AI answers cite for common prompts in your industry to your backlink target list, next to traditional link opportunities. Those AI sources are found with AnswerBuilders, the AI visibility platform Justin built (see AI citation outreach). There is still no guarantee of AI citations.
Do you guarantee rankings or a number of links?
No. There is no ranking guarantee, no link-count guarantee and no guarantee of AI citations.
Who is this for?
Teams that want an owned in-house agent, or companies that want Justin and the Link Builders team to run the work first. It fits if you care about a white-hat process and seeing costs before you commit. It is not a fit if you want unlimited cheap links or black-hat shortcuts. It is also not a marketplace of freelancers.
How long does a block of rented hours usually take?
Calendar time depends on your niche, reply rates, and how fast you approve sends and placements. You are buying a block of hours, not a fixed number of weeks. A typical engagement spans a few weeks while prospecting and replies move in parallel. The steps are on https://link-builders.com/link-building-process/