Case study: How to find sellers directly for high DA editorial links

First, go to your taget site, say LifeHack.

Open the first 4-6 articles in tabs and then click all of the external links in each article.

Install the Moz DA tool so we can quickly check the authority of sites to know whether they are a real source or not.

I'll use this article: http://www.lifehack.org/401635/how-to-save-big-on-internet-service-for-your-new-apartment

Once I find one promotional link, as we see HighSpeedInternet.com mentioned twice there, then we can further our review of the writer. We look for writers that only write once or twice a month, as it's unlikely they sell much more than that.

Then we further check their articles to make sure for sure they offer promotional links regularily.

This article: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/15-extreme-things-during-your-visit-utah.html
Has TONS of small links to really hide the promotional one, such as: http://www.uintakiting.com/

Past that, I'm not seeing too many promotional links, so it could be a winner but I'm not positive. So now I skip back and look at more articles on the homepage.

So look at this article: http://www.lifehack.org/401535/10-things-you-need-for-your-next-flight
Link to this little ecommerce site: http://www.level3active.com/

We may have a hit.

Looking further into his article, I notice he is a new writer with 2 articles. Both are HEAVILY promoting the site FareCompare, but I also see it's in his bio. I'm so amazed that the editorial staff just lets the self promotion slide.

Moving on. We're looking for articles with lots of links. As the promotional links are generally embedded with other high quality links.

This article: http://www.lifehack.org/401386/15-hacks-to-reduce-stress-on-daily-basis
Links to 2 low quality sites:
http://www.kimschaper.com/2016/03/10/why-wine-walking-and-dark-chocolate-help-reduce-stress/
http://www.homegear.co/simple-tips-to-improve-your-quality-of-sleep/

Another article of his: http://www.lifehack.org/396098/7-reasons-to-visit-singapore
Promotes another small site: http://thesupguru.com/articles/why-stand-up-paddle-boarding-is-so-good-for-your-health/

Anymore?
http://www.lifehack.org/383164/6-positive-things-that-came-with-crowdfunding
http://crowdexpert.com/jobs-act-overview/

http://www.lifehack.org/364938/fresh-out-school-6-ways-jumpstart-your-career
Oh, promoting an article of an SEO consultant. SEO consultant don't buy links, do they? Oh wait, they do!
https://www.720digital.co.uk/seo-linkedin-account-top-5/

None of his article have no links.

Oh look, he works for an internet marketing agency. What a coincidence!

Oh, his gmail is right in his account URL for easy purchase info.

Ok, enough exposing of people for today. Hope you've all learned how to go about doing this. Have a good weekend folks.

First of all, thanks for the awesome reverse engineering analysis.

This is really all about reverse engineering and you did a good job.

But one thing that sticks in my mind is that it appears that this method that you laid out requires quite a bit of labor and effort.

It would be nice if somebody came up with a tool that would automate this process.

Maybe, even filter writers based on the categories that they normally write on.

This can be taken on one level deeper by tying in those categories to certain keyword targets.

Regardless, you posted an awesome tutorial and I've definitely bookmarked this thread to apply in the future.

I'd like to add more value to my writing.

I wonder if the writers that you identified can take pre-existing texts or maybe bits and pieces of texts people write and plug in target links.