Margin check
Cheap links, thin margins: which products can afford one?
A $30 link is cheap for a sofa and dear for a phone case. This margin check turns price, cost and fees into the number of orders a link must win back.
The rule
A link must be repaid in orders you can believe in
Divide the link price by contribution per order. If the answer is one to three orders, go ahead. If it is ten or more, the product is the wrong target, or the link is.
- Contribution means price minus product cost, shipping, fees and a returns allowance
- Use the same formula for every item
- Ignore revenue; revenue does not pay the bills
Three invented products, one formula
| Phone-case bundle | Cast iron skillet | Garden bench | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Selling price | $22.00 | $48.00 | $240.00 |
| Product cost | $12.00 | $19.00 | $130.00 |
| Shipping paid by you | $5.00 | $6.00 | $35.00 |
| Card fee | $0.94 | $1.69 | $7.26 |
| Returns allowance | $0.88 | $1.92 | $12.00 |
| Contribution per order | $3.18 | $19.39 | $55.74 |
| Orders to repay a $30 link | 10 | 2 | 1 |
| Orders to repay a $150 link | 48 | 8 | 3 |
What the table is telling you
Price tags mislead. The bundle costs $22 and keeps $3.18, so a single $30 link needs ten sales just to stand still. The bench keeps seventeen times as much per order.
Cheap links are not automatically cheap. A $1 placement on a small site is a fair experiment for a product with margin. For the bundle, the same dollar competes with simply raising the price.
Run a sanity check on volume too. If your category page earns eight orders a month at best, a $150 link for the skillet needs the whole of it to be new. Be careful with that assumption.
The formula, ready for a spreadsheet
Paste into three cells and fill down your catalogue.
contribution = price - cost - shipping - (price * 0.029 + 0.30) - (price * returns_rate)
orders_to_repay = ceil(link_price / contribution)
break_even_visits = link_price / (conversion_rate * contribution)Cheap, and still worth reading three articles
To buy backlinks cheap without wasting money, remember that price on our marketplace runs from $1 to about $500 a link, set by donor authority, traffic and niche. Buying cheap means smaller sites. That is fine, provided the site is real, in your niche and readable.
Open three posts before adding a row to the basket. Look for a human voice. Check for sensible outbound links and a topic that fits a store like yours; Domain Rating from Ahrefs is a hint at strength, not a verdict on relevance.
A low price should never be the reason to buy. The reason is that the payback maths work for that page, and the category page is fit to receive the visitors.
Margin questions we hear
What counts as a cheap backlink?
On our marketplace, anything from $1 upwards on a smaller donor. Cheap is relative: a link that costs two orders on a good product is cheaper than a $1 link on a product with no margin and no traffic.
Should I include ad spend in the formula?
Not in contribution per order for organic sales. Do compare it, though: if a paid order costs you $14 and the organic order costs a link share, you see how much room the link has.
Does free shipping change the maths?
Yes, it comes straight off contribution unless you already raised prices. Put the postage you actually pay in the sheet. Low-ticket items suffer most.
Why not buy links for every product?
Because the budget would spread thin and most products never rank anyway. Link to the category and a handful of high-margin items, and let internal links carry the rest.