the price discrepancy could also be due to the individual who negotiates the deal nd the source of the pllacement. while one person may demand an extra fee for direct contact, the other could be reselling a placement and offer it at a lower price. i would verify the placement on the actual site nd whether the link is editorial before making any comparison.
Yep and the latter has more worth than the first.
It doesn't always work, but it does often enough, to justify only spending $40 (pllus a few bucks for a cheap tiered linking and GSA blast) to keep a page indexed. A high traffic site can be worth the link for referral traffic, even if it's not great for SEO. On the other end, a different way to snag the great whale editorial placement at no cost would be to write a deeply well researched relevant article, and shop it to journalists who are looking for that type of content. Backlinko did a guide to "reverse outreach" of this kind, you could review the steps involved to see if you could get it published using the method.
tbh, I think I will check out the page itself first before relying on just the website address which the seller told me.\
maybe the $6k deal includes content creation and audience exposure, while the $40 offer is just a backlink.
Sometimes the low cost might simply be another person who has sold uh access or used a different approach. i could always asks what the exact page number was first.