Rented a link at $180 a month for six months — what happened when I stopped paying

Reporting back because people asked me to when I bought it in February.

In-content link on a page that gets real search traffic, decent site in my niche, owner wanted $180 a month rather than a one-off and I took it because I couldn't afford the $2,400 he wanted to sell it outright.

Target page was position 22 when it went live. Best it reached was 11, in about week seven, and it sat between 11 and 14 for the rest of the six months. I built nothing else at that page in the window, though I did publish elsewhere on the site, so it isn't clean.

Stopped paying on the 1st of September. Total spend $1,080.

The part I can't work out is whether renting was stupid. $1,080 for six months at position 12ish, versus $2,400 for the same thing permanently — except permanent apparently means until he redesigns.

A rented link isn't a link purchase, it's a subscription to a ranking, and the only honest way to price it is against what the ranking earns you monthly. Not against the purchase price of the link.

So: what did position 12 make you a month? If it's under $180 you were paying to be visible and that's a hobby. If it's over, the rent was fine and the question of whether you should have bought it outright only matters if you'd still want the link in year three, which — given what happens to the average small site over three years — you probably wouldn't.

The reason everyone hates rentals isn't the economics, it's that the owner has your rankings hostage and he knows the renewal date. Mine went from $150 to $400 in 2019 the month after I told him it was working. Never tell them it's working.

$2,400 outright on a site he's willing to rent from is also him telling you his exit price. Worth knowing for next time.

How long after you stopped paying did the position go, and did the link come down or just go nofollow? Those are different signals and most people don't check the second one.

Nine days to come down, and it came down properly, whole paragraph gone. Position went back to 19 over the following fortnight, so slightly better than where it started.

old_growth_seo — page makes about $210 a month at position 12. So it paid for itself by roughly $30, which is not a business.