A public article with one link, priced in public

Why the quote is $500

A typical agency line item for one “editorial placement” lands between $500 and $1,000. All four of these publishers say that number out loud on their pricing pages, because it is the comparison they are making. The invoice is rarely the cost of typing a paragraph. It is outreach to a site the agency does not control, a writer, a negotiation, and a placement you often cannot see until someone forwards a screenshot. If the page later disappears, the thread is the only record.

Some of that money is real work. A reporter at a publication with an audience, an editor, and years of links is expensive, and a cold pitch that earns a mention there is worth more than a form. The problem is the middle of the market, where the deliverable is “a dofollow link on a blog” and the domain rating on the slide is the product. You cannot open the CMS. You cannot see whether the anchor says what you were told. You pay before the URL exists.

Lede Press, Hed Press, Listed Press, and Piece Press invert that. They publish on domains they operate. The price is on the page before you start. The live URL is the record. What they do not sell is an aged domain. Each one states that its domain rating is 0, and each one says a published page does not promise a ranking, a citation, a traffic number, or a movement in that rating. If a vendor needs a DR 50 guest post for a client report, these four will not fill that cell. If you want a public article with one contextual link you can inspect the same day, the $29 package is the whole offer.

Four desks, one commercial shape

The sites are siblings. Projects are free. Each project may have one reciprocal community page and one nofollow community page. Reciprocal means your site credits the press URL while the page is live. A text link in a sentence is enough. The badge is optional. That reciprocal page carries a dofollow product link. The nofollow page needs no credit and marks the product link rel=nofollow. The $29 page is unlimited per project, dofollow, and does not ask for a credit.

Free pages share five slots a day, released at 08:00 UTC. Miss the five and the page waits. A $29 page does not take a free slot. It goes live the day it is ready. The $29 edit is written for search and for answer engines: a direct answer near the top, FAQ schema, Article and product structured data, an llms.txt line, a richer Markdown twin, RSS, a custom featured image, one Pinterest pin that links back to the article, IndexNow for the HTML and the Markdown, and up to three times you can schedule the story onto the homepage again tomorrow. That is production, not a ranking warranty.

The page type is what changes. Pick the desk that matches the sentence a reader is already trying to finish.

Lede Press: the daily edition

Lede Press runs a public edition of product stories. A page names the product, says who it is for, and places one link in the article. When the day turns over, the story leaves the front of the index and stays at its own URL. That is the asset: a permanent write-up in a daily edition, with the link in the body.

Use Lede when you can explain the product as a story someone might read in a morning edition. The reciprocal page is free if your site credits ledepress.com. The full pass is $29 and is described on the Lede Press pricing page, including the domain-rating disclaimer. Our notes on how it fits a launch month are on the Lede Press platform page.

Hed Press: the opener

Hed Press writes the story so the first lines already answer who it is, what it does, and who it is for. A reader who never scrolls still knows what the page is about. Answer engines that quote only the opening have the same information. The product link comes in the article, once, in a phrase the page already uses.

Hed is the right desk when the product can be said in an opening. A comparison with named criteria belongs on Listed. A decision that takes several sections belongs on Piece. The $29 plan adds an opener-tuned edit, schema, a pin, and IndexNow. The numbers are on hedpress.com/pricing. Hed Press states domain rating 0 in the same place it states the price. Catalog entry: Hed Press.

Listed Press: the shortlist

Listed Press writes for someone who is already comparing. The page states the criteria, names the products, and says why each one is on the list and where it sits next to the others. A logo grid cannot do that job. A single-product announcement cannot either. The link is one product URL inside that shortlist.

This is the page shape that matches “best X for Y” searches, which is why agencies like to sell roundup placements. Listed publishes the roundup itself. Free if you credit the site, or $29 with no credit, as written on the Listed Press pricing page. Read the criteria on the live page after it ships. If your product does not meet them, the link is a directory row with extra words. Our write-up is the Listed Press page.

Piece Press: the explainer

Piece Press takes one buyer question and stays with it: when the product is the right call, when it is not, and what surrounds the choice. The publisher’s test is practical. A reader should be able to send the URL to a teammate and have the context still on the page. The product link sits where that reasoning lands.

Piece is the long page. Use it for a workflow or a category choice that does not fit an opener or a single row in a shortlist. The full explainer, including the decision-tuned edit and the same $29 cap, is on piecepress.com/pricing. Domain rating is stated as 0 there too. Catalog notes: Piece Press.

What you can verify

After the page is live, open it. Find the product sentence. Inspect the anchor. On a reciprocal page or a $29 page you should see a normal link: no nofollow, no sponsored, no ugc. On the free nofollow plan you should see rel=nofollow. If the attribute does not match the plan, the pricing table was not the delivery.

Then look at what the page is. A Lede story should read as an edition piece. A Hed story should make sense in the first lines. A Listed page should name criteria before it names you. A Piece explainer should still make sense if you email it to someone who has never heard the product. A thin page with a link in it is the thing the $500 quote was already selling. These desks are only cheaper if the article is actually an article.

Leave the reciprocal credit up for as long as you want the free dofollow page to stay in good faith. The publishers say the credit stays while the page is live. A text mention of the press URL is enough. You do not have to embed a badge.

Where this sits in a launch

These four do not replace a launch board. Product Hunt, Show HN, and a fair daily board are rooms with a clock. People show up, comment, and leave. An edition story, an opener, a shortlist, and an explainer are pages that remain. Put them in the week you are writing the one-liner and the fact sheet, so the URL exists when someone later asks an assistant what the product is. The sequence for the rooms is the four-week launch sequence. The difference between a board and a lasting page is boards versus directories.

Spend the $29 when you want the edit, the schema, the Markdown twin, the pin, and same-day publishing without a credit. Spend $0 when a site credit is acceptable and you can wait for one of the five daily slots. Skip both if the only number you need on a slide is domain rating. The publishers have already told you that number is 0.