What it does
Outreach is fundamentally a conversion funnel: pitches sent → replies received → positive replies → published placements. Each step has a conversion rate, and those rates compound. This calculator runs the math both directions: from a target placement count it tells you how many pitches you need, how many hours that takes, and how many people that requires.
The output answers the practical questions any link-building team faces: can a single in-house hire hit our target? Or do we need a small team? Or is the target pace impossible at our funnel rates?
When to run this calculation
Three decision points where this calculator earns its keep:
- Hiring an outreach person. Before posting the job ad, model whether one person can realistically deliver your target. Spoiler: an in-house person at 4 pitches/hour for ~6 productive hours/day for 21 days/month produces about 500 pitches/month. At a 12% response rate × 35% positive × 75% close, that's 16 placements/month. If your target is 30, one person isn't enough.
- Comparing in-house vs agency. Calculate in-house cost per placement (loaded hourly rate × hours needed) vs agency rate per placement. Agencies often beat in-house cost-per-placement on volume because they spread relationship-building across many clients.
- Setting realistic targets. Founders sometimes commit to outreach goals ("30 placements a month") without doing the funnel math. Running the numbers shows whether the goal is achievable at the funnel rates you can plausibly maintain.
How to use this calculator
- Set your target. Placements per month — the number that matters for your business. Most B2B SaaS programs target 8–25/month; ecommerce can run higher.
- Enter your funnel rates. Use real data if you have it. If you're scoping a new program, start with industry benchmarks: response rate 10–15%, positive rate 30–40%, close rate 70–80%.
- Set operator capacity. Realistic productive hours per day (5–7 is honest), pitches per hour (3–5 for cold outreach including prospecting and writing), working days per month (21 in the US).
- Add the loaded hourly rate. Salary, benefits, tools, software, and any prorated overhead per FTE. US in-house: $40–80/hr. Offshore: $10–25/hr.
- Read the panel. Pitches per placement is the conversion-rate inverse and the most useful single number. Hours of work and people required answer the staffing question. Cost per placement is the apples-to- apples comparison against agency pricing.
Funnel benchmarks across types of outreach
- Cold guest post outreach (B2B SaaS). Response: 8–15%. Positive: 25–40%. Close: 60–80%. Pitches per placement: 30–80.
- Warm publisher relationships. Response: 25–50%. Positive: 50–70%. Close: 80–95%. Pitches per placement: 5–15. (This is why publisher relationships compound.)
- HARO / journalist source outreach. Response: 5–10% on individual queries. Positive: 40–60%. Close: 70–85%. Pitches per placement: 25–60.
- Niche edits. Response: 12–20%. Positive: 30–50%. Close: 65–80%. Pitches per placement: 15–35.
- Broken-link outreach. Response: 10–18%. Positive: 35–50%. Close: 60–75%. Pitches per placement: 20–40.
Numbers vary by niche. Use these as starting estimates, then replace with your actual measured rates after 30 days of campaign data.
Using the result honestly
- First-year hires hit 50–70% of these numbers. New outreach operators take 4–6 months to build publisher relationships and hit full productivity. Plan ramp time into the budget.
- Quality vs volume tradeoff is real. Higher pitch volume usually means lower per-pitch quality, which lowers response rate. Optimizing for volume above 6 pitches/hour typically tanks the funnel rates.
- Compare in-house cost-per-placement to agency. If your in-house cost-per-placement is $400 and agency quotes are $300, the agency is cheaper. If your in-house number is $200, in-house is cheaper but only after the ramp period.
- Account for non-pitching time. Outreach operators spend ~30% of their time on non-pitching work — relationship maintenance, content drafts, reporting, tooling. The calculator's "productive hours per day" should reflect pitching time only, not calendar time.
- Don't cap budget by current funnel rates. Funnel rates improve with experience and relationships. What looks impossible at month-1 rates becomes routine by month-12.
Frequently asked questions
What's the most important number this calculator outputs?
Pitches per placement. It's the inverse of your end-to-end conversion rate and the single most useful number for outreach planning. If pitches per placement is 50, you know exactly what volume you need to hit any target.
What's a realistic response rate for cold outreach?
8–15% for cold B2B SaaS guest post outreach. 5–10% for journalist HARO queries. 12–20% for niche edit pitches. 25–50% for warm relationships you've built. New campaigns hit the lower end of these ranges; mature campaigns with publisher relationships hit the upper.
How many pitches can one person realistically send per hour?
3–5 for cold outreach including prospecting, qualification, and personalized writing. 6–8 if you have pre-qualified prospects and a strong template. Above 10/hour is unsustainable — quality drops and response rates collapse. The calculator's default 4/hour reflects steady-state realistic productivity.
Why does the answer say 0.5 people?
Means the work fits in roughly half a full-time person's productive hours. In practice you can't hire half a person — you hire one (with extra capacity for other work) or use a part-time / fractional outreach contractor. Round up for hiring decisions.
How do new hires affect the math?
First-year outreach hires typically hit 50–70% of the calculated capacity for the first 4–6 months while building publisher relationships and learning the niche. Plan budget that accounts for the ramp — both salary cost and reduced placement output.
Should I include relationship-maintenance time?
Yes — but use the productive-hours-per-day field for pitching only. If your operator spends 6 hours/day total on outreach work but only 4 hours pitching (the rest is replies, relationship calls, content drafting), use 4 in the calculator. The output is then accurate for placement throughput.
Why is in-house cost-per-placement sometimes higher than agency?
Agencies amortize relationship-building, prospecting databases, and tooling across many clients. They also have specialized operators who hit higher pitches-per-hour at the same response rate. In-house pays the full cost without the amortization benefit. The calculator shows you exactly when each model wins on cost.
Will this tool log my data?
No. Everything runs in your browser. The numbers you enter never leave your device — there is no server, no logging, no analytics on your input.