FATJOE Marketplace Review (2025)

What is FATJOE?

Fatjoe.com is a link-building service that also offers other SEO services, ranging from content writing to PR campaigns to social media videos.

To acquire a backlink, you can order link placement, niche edits, a PR campaign, and many more. Fatjoe also provides copywriting services, making it easy to manage the link-building process.

Fatjoe was founded by Joe Davies and Joe Taylor in 2012 as an outsourced solution for SEO agencies, teams, and freelancers. As of January 2025, it has an online catalog of 10,000 websites for link placements.

In this review, we only focus on FATJOE’s link-building marketplace.

Source: Fatjoe

We used Fatjoe’s service and purchased a link through them to provide a detailed review about them.

Here’s what we think about the service.

Our Review

Criteria	Details
Expected publisher site’s DR	30+
Actual publisher site’s DR	39
Expected site traffic	100 to 10K
Actual traffic (Semrush estimate)	128
Actual traffic (Ahrefs estimate)	152
Fatjoe’s Price (with copywriting)	$127
Price on other platforms (excluding copywriting)	$35
Estimated copywriting fee (500 words)	$20
Fatjoe delivery time	28 days
Delivery time for this link on other platforms	2-3 days
Value for Money	Low

Pricing

We decided to go ahead with the Blogger Outreach in Fatjoe for link-building.

Here’s what the pricing looks like:

Two observations.

First, DR is not a reliable indicator. Ahrefs DR can be manipulated easily to a higher number.

We did an experiment where we jacked up an empty domain’s DR to a score of 50+. All for $80.

Second, the traffic range for each price bracket is too wide.

The most popular plan—$129/placement—gets you a backlink from a site with traffic ranging from 100 to 10k! If the site traffic is 10k, it’s legit. But if it’s 100, the backlink value is next to nothing. You basically get nothing for $129.

Anything less than 1k traffic per month, the site is not worth getting a backlink from.

What We Ordered

We went ahead with Fatjoe’s popular plan—$129/placement.

So, here’s what Fatjoe promised for this link placement:

DR 30+ site
Monthly traffic – 10 to 10K
Word count – 500 words
Delivery time – 28 days

What Was Delivered

After about a month of placing the order, we got the backlink. Now, here’s what we think about the link delivered:

#1. Published Article

Next, we checked the the article on the site that provided the link.

The article looks good. It’s short and nice. Doesn’t seem AI. And the quality, in general, looks okay.

The article links back to our intended website. The link placement and anchor text is also good.

#2. Site Quality

The publisher site has an Ahrefs DR of 39.

As we mentioned above, we don’t think DR is a valuable metric since it can be manipulated so easily. But that’s the metric agreed upon while placing the order, so I’m not going to flog a dead horse here.

Let’s check the site traffic.

According to Semrush, the publisher site gets a monthly traffic of just 128!

Semrush traffic for Fatjoe publisher site

Source: Semrush

Ahrefs says the same thing too. 152 monthly visitors.

Ahrefs traffic for Fatjoe publisher site

Source: Ahrefs

Technically, Fatjoe did deliver a link from a DR30+ site with the traffic of 100 to 10,000. But the value delivered for the price is abysmally low.

The publisher site is not a site I would ever acquire a link from. Certainly not for $120+.

#3. Value for Price

I also checked the link price from the same website on other platforms using fatgrid backlinks search engine.

Turns out, the link from the same website that Fatjoe got for us could be acquired at a much cheaper price. As low as $35.

I also cross-checked whether Collaborator.pro did offer a link from the same publisher at $35. And they did.

Fatjoe publisher site at cheap rate on collaborator pro

So, three things.

First, the link obtained as Fatjoe markets it as “Blogger Outreach” is certainly not acquired by outreach. Everyone is selling links from this website.

Second, the site doesn’t have enough traffic to pass on any authority with its backlinks.

Fatjoe quotes a wide range of 100 to 10K traffic and gets away by providing a link from a site at the lower end of this range.

Third, I paid $127 for a link that’s available for $35 on other marketplaces. Even after factoring in the copywriting task (which I assume would cost $20-$30 on Upwork), Fatjoe applies a huge markup for a backlink that barely moves the needle.

#4. Delivery Time

We placed our order on 14th Dec 2024. Fatjoe promises a 28-day delivery (it also offers an express 14-day delivery for a fee).

We went ahead with 28-day delivery and received the link by 10th Jan 2025.

So, good job on timely delivery. But…

When I checked the lead time for this site on Collaborator.pro, the average placement period shows 2 days!

A two-day lead time link I could’ve acquired from other platforms cost me far more on Fatjoe with a 28-day lead time.

Key Facts about Fatjoe

# of listings: 10K

Headquarters: UK, Staffordshire, Cannock

Key people: CEO Joe Davies, Founder Joe Taylor, Head of Marketing Dav Nash, Head of Business Operations Emily Bradley

Commission: no data

Publisher traffic verification:

Organic traffic: No
Total traffic: Yes
By country: No
Traffic trends: No

Copywriting: available from the platform, $12 – $110+ depending on article type, length, contributor

Founding Story

FATJOE was founded by Joe Davies and Joe Taylor in 2012 to solve a problem they faced at the agency they worked for at the time—scaling too fast without enough time to service clients. So, they built FATJOE to be the outsourced solution for SEO agencies, teams, and freelancers.

FATJOE’s first clients came through word of mouth and ads. They didn’t have any early big wins, but the team worked behind the scenes for some of the world’s biggest agencies and grew slowly to build over 4000 links and produce over 1 million words per month.

Now, with over a decade in the industry, they have more than 40,000 agency and team clients, servicing top SEO agencies of all sizes.

Interface

The first thing (and not really the best thing) I noticed on the FATJOE marketplace is that the publisher site names are blurred out. The domain names are revealed only during the checkout.

Since I am used to seeing domain names on other marketplaces, this masking felt off.

Other than that, the interface is clean and easy to use. The platform provides good descriptions of the publisher sites, which is not common in other marketplaces. The checkout process is smooth as well.

FATJOE marketplace view. Source: FATJOE

FATJOE has basic filters like site category, traffic, Moz DA, and Ahrefs DR. But it does not provide any advanced filters, nor can you search a publisher site.

The data on publisher sites could be better as well since there is no info on organic traffic, historical traffic trend, and geo-distribution.

What Users Say

The platform has decent reviews on Trustpilot. The FATJOE team is responsive as well.

However, several 1* reviews complain about their poor content writing services.

A Trustpilot review complaining about FATJOE’s writing services

On the other hand, when we contacted their team, they provided a great response with helpful details. So, a bonus point for their support team.

Bottomline

We consider FATJOE a decent link-building service with an easy-to-use interface and responsive customer support. However, the service comes with significant drawbacks. The wide traffic range for link placements, lack of transparency about publisher sites, and inflated pricing make it difficult to justify the value for money.

Our rating: 3/5

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