A journalist is writing a piece right now, on deadline, and needs one expert quote to finish it.
They don't need you specifically. They need someone who knows the subject and can answer within the hour. If that's you, you get quoted — and usually credited with a link from a publication you could never have pitched cold.
That's the whole mechanism, and it's the most accessible link source available to a one-person business. No budget, no agency, no relationships required.
The catch is that the infrastructure changed recently, and most guides haven't caught up.
The short version
HARO is gone. Cision rebranded it as Connectively and shut it down entirely in December 2024. Any guide still telling you to sign up for HARO is out of date.
The market fragmented rather than consolidating. You now work a small stack instead of one platform.
What wins is unchanged: respond fast, send a ready-to-publish quote, and offer something specific from your own experience rather than a generic answer.
The post-HARO landscape
For over a decade HARO was the default. You answered a journalist's query by email, they quoted you, you got a link. Cision acquired it, rebranded it as Connectively, and closed it on 9 December 2024.
Nothing replaced it as a single default. Instead the market split, which means choosing well matters more than it used to.
Source of Sources — free, email-based, deliberately HARO-shaped. Launched by Peter Shankman, who created HARO originally, right after Connectively closed. Runs as daily digests you reply to directly. The closest thing to the original at zero cost, and the natural starting point if you used HARO before.
Qwoted — free tier plus paid. Profile-based, so journalists can find you proactively rather than only through queries. Generally better signal-to-noise than the open-email model.
Featured.com — paid, vetted-expert positioning. Aimed at connecting journalists with sources for publication-ready content.
Help a B2B Writer — free, narrow, B2B-focused, run by the Superpath community. Fewer queries, much higher relevance if you're in B2B or SaaS. Hit rate per pitch is typically far better than a general platform.
#JournoRequest on X and LinkedIn — journalists posting directly, no platform in between. Free, fast, and it's where speed advantages are largest.
The practical stack for a small business: Source of Sources for free volume, Help a B2B Writer if you're B2B, and the #JournoRequest feed for speed. Add a paid tier only once free ones are producing.
And diversify. HARO's shutdown is the argument — no single platform is safe from a model change or a closure. Work two or three.
What actually wins a placement
The tactics matter more than the platform, and they're consistent across all of them.
Speed beats quality, within reason. Journalists work to deadlines and often use the first usable response. Responding within the first hour is worth more than responding perfectly on day two. Set up alerts and check them.
Send a ready-to-publish quote. The single biggest differentiator.
Wrong: "I'd be happy to discuss this — when are you free for a call?" You've given a busy person on deadline more work.
Right: two or three sentences, in quotation marks, that could be pasted straight into the article, followed by your name, title, and site.
Be specific and first-hand. Journalists are drowning in generic AI-generated pitches. What cuts through is something only you could say — a number from your own work, a concrete case, a position with detail behind it. "Most companies struggle with deliverability" gets deleted. "In 50 audits I ran last year, 34 had no valid SPF record" gets used.
Answer the actual question asked. Not the question you wish they'd asked so you could mention your product.
Keep it short. Three or four sentences plus credentials. Anything longer is a wall a journalist won't read.
A pitch template
Subject: [Their query topic] — [your credential in five words]
Hi [name],
Saw your query on [topic]. Here's a quote you can use directly:
"[Two or three sentences answering their exact question, containing one specific number, example, or observation from your own work.]"
— [Your name], [Title], [yoursite.com]
Happy to expand on any of this if useful. I've been working in [field] since [year] and have [one relevant credential].
[Your name]
That's it. Under 150 words, no attachments, no pitch deck, nothing gated.
Beyond reactive sourcing
Responding to queries is the fastest route in. Two more approaches are worth knowing.
The data pitch. If you've produced original research, that's a story rather than a request. Journalists need data, and a genuine finding with a clear method is something they can build a piece around. Pitch the finding, not your company — lead with the number, offer the method and full dataset, and don't ask for anything. Producing the data.
The local and trade angle. National press is brutally competitive. Local publications and trade press are not, and they cover businesses in their patch or their sector as a matter of routine. The links are often just as good, and the audience is frequently more relevant to what you actually sell.
What to expect, honestly
Setting expectations properly, because this is where people give up too early.
Most pitches go nowhere. That's normal and not a signal you're doing it wrong. The economics work because the cost per pitch is a few minutes.
Coverage isn't always a link. Some publications credit by name without hyperlinking. That still has value — brand mentions matter for entity recognition, and increasingly for AI citation — but count it separately from links.
The lag is real. A journalist may use your quote weeks after you send it. Don't judge a month's effort at the end of that month.
Consistency wins. Fifteen minutes daily scanning queries and sending one or two responses beats a burst of effort followed by nothing. The wins come from volume of attempts over months.
Frequently asked questions
Does HARO still work?
No — HARO no longer exists. Cision rebranded it as Connectively and shut it down entirely in December 2024. The underlying tactic works exactly as well as it always did, since journalists still need expert sources on deadline, but the market fragmented across several platforms rather than consolidating into one replacement. Source of Sources, launched by HARO's original founder, is the closest free equivalent.
How do I find journalists?
Reactive platforms are the easiest entry point — Source of Sources, Qwoted, Help a B2B Writer — where journalists post what they need and you respond. For proactive outreach, monitor #JournoRequest on X and LinkedIn, and identify writers who cover your subject by looking at bylines on articles you'd want to appear in. Reading someone's recent work before pitching them matters more than any database.
How long until coverage turns into links?
Variable and often slow. A journalist might use your quote weeks after you send it, and publication lag adds more. Expect a month or two before your first placement, and judge the approach over a quarter rather than a fortnight. Some coverage credits you by name without a hyperlink, which still carries value for entity recognition even though it won't show in a backlink tool.
What to do next
Sign up for Source of Sources today — it's free, it's email-based, and it takes two minutes.
Then set aside fifteen minutes tomorrow morning to read the digest and respond to one query with a ready-to-publish quote. Not an offer to talk. An actual quote, with one specific number from your own work in it.
That single habit, repeated, is the most accessible link source a one-person business has.
Free: The SEO audit checklist.
Related guides
- Link building without buying links — the wider strategy
- 7 linkable assets — producing the data that makes a pitch
- Link outreach emails that get replies — proactive outreach
- Email copywriting — the craft behind a pitch that gets opened
Join the Newsletter
Get practical marketing tactics delivered straight to your inbox.
Written by
Muhammad Basim
Related Articles
Keyword Cannibalization: How to Spot It and Fix It
You wrote a good post about email authentication in 2023. Then a better one in 2024, because you'd learned more. Then a third in 2025 covering DMARC specifically, which overlapped with both. Now none of them rank well, and Google keeps swapping which one it shows. That's cannibalisation. Your own pages competing for the same […]
Mining Search Console for Keywords You Already Half-Rank For
There's a list sitting in your Search Console right now of keywords Google has already decided you're relevant for, where you're ranking just badly enough that nobody sees you. Nobody looks at it. Everybody buys a keyword tool instead. Those queries — roughly positions 8 through 20 — are the cheapest wins available on any […]
Long-Tail Keywords: Where a New Site Should Actually Start
Every new site owner wants to rank for the two-word term. "Email marketing." "Project management." "Running shoes." And every new site owner is competing there against domains with fifteen years of links, full-time content teams, and a brand people already search by name. You will not win that this year. You may not win it […]