How U.S. Experts Turn Their Knowledge Into Press Quotes, Backlinks, and Credibility

There is an old saying in this business, and I’m paraphrasing a certain Sicilian gentleman from Lake Tahoe: “Keep your friends close, but your journalists closer.” Nobody actually said that, but if Michael Corleone had been an actuarial consultant instead of a reluctant crime boss, he would have. Because the fastest, cheapest, most legitimate way to build authority in your field isn’t a $750 backlink purchased in a dark alley (that’s the real going rate for a quality paid link, per BuzzStream) – it’s answering a reporter’s question before your competitor does.

Welcome to the world of source-matching platforms – the modern descendants of HARO (“Help A Reporter Out”). If you’re a consultant, an actuary, a scuba instructor, a real estate broker, a financial planner, or basically anyone with expertise and a pulse, these sites exist to hand you free press. Journalists need quotes. You have opinions backed by credentials. It’s a match made in either heaven or a Tuesday morning email digest, depending on your tolerance for inbox clutter.

The Family Business: What These Sites Actually Do

Think of it as a very polite, very professional version of a horse head under the sheets – except instead of intimidation, you’re sending cooperation. A journalist writing an article about, say, whether scuba diving insurance covers shark encounters, posts a request. You, the expert, reply with a sharp, quotable, 100-word answer. If they use it, you get named, often linked, in a real publication – not a listicle mill, not a $50 guest post farm, but an actual outlet with editorial standards. Google notices. So do AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, which increasingly cite publications with real editorial vetting when answering user questions. In other words: one good quote can pay dividends you never see directly.

The numbers back this up. HARO (now operating under the Featured.com umbrella after a wild couple of years) has processed over 2 million pitches and sent more than 100 million emails connecting journalists and sources. Journalist requests on the platform grew 68% year over year, while subscriber growth climbed 54%. Meanwhile, roughly 33% of PR professionals report having earned real media coverage through these platforms, and about 32% of submitted journalist requests get rejected before ever going out – which tells you the ones that do get published are, generally, legitimate.

A Brief, Slightly Dramatic History (Every Family Has One)

HARO started in 2008 as a Facebook group and grew into a juggernaut connecting over 800,000 to 1 million-plus sources with 55,000 to 75,000 journalists. Then, like a consigliere who got a little too comfortable, corporate ownership changed things. Cision bought HARO, rebranded it “Connectively,” and then – in a plot twist worthy of a Corleone family Christmas – shut the whole thing down in December 2024. For a few months, the PR world was Fredo-levels of lost. Featured.com bought the HARO name back and relaunched it in April 2025, and Connectively itself was later revived. It has since surpassed 100,000 registered users. Meanwhile, Qwoted (qwoted.com), a verification-first rival, connects 30,000-plus journalists with 100,000-plus vetted experts, landing users in Forbes, Men’s Health, and Medical News Today. Its free tier comes with a two-hour delay on new requests – in a world where speed wins the pitch, that’s like showing up after the horse head’s already been delivered. The moral of the whole saga: in this business, nothing stays dead for long. Just ask Vito.

The Full Lineup: Fifteen-Plus Places to Get Quoted

Here’s your family tree – the full roster of platforms where an expert (that’s you) can turn knowledge into ink. Work more than one. Data from BuzzStream shows the average overlap between any two journalist request platforms is just 17%, meaning if you’re only checking one site, you’re missing well over 80% of the opportunities out there.

Connectively  –  connectively.us  –  The rebuilt house of HARO, now under Featured.com ownership. Free-to-use, email-based journalist request platform with 100,000+ registered users and requests across dozens of categories.

Qwoted  –  qwoted.com  –  Verification-first platform connecting 30,000+ journalists with 100,000+ vetted experts. A favorite for landing top-tier outlets like Forbes and Business Insider.

Featured.com (formerly HARO)  –  featured.com  –  The revived original. Free, ad-supported email digest sent multiple times daily; also offers an AI-powered PR co-pilot for managing pitches, podcasts, and bylines.

Source of Sources  –  sourceofsources.com  –  Built by Peter Shankman, HARO’s original founder, right after Connectively went dark. Free, donation-based, with a zero-tolerance spam policy – and reportedly the highest dofollow link rate of any platform, at 36.26%.

Help a B2B Writer  –  helpab2bwriter.com  –  A narrower, B2B-only version of the model, run through the Superpath marketing community. Ideal for consultants selling to businesses rather than consumers.

SourceBottle  –  sourcebottle.com  –  Free platform popular internationally, especially in Australia, with category-based email alerts spanning nearly every industry imaginable.

ProfNet (PR Newswire)  –  profnet.prnewswire.com  –  A long-running, enterprise-grade expert-source service. Paid and polished, aimed at bigger firms and established consultancies.

JournoFinder  –  journofinder.com  –  An AI aggregator that pulls live journalist requests from across the web – including the #JournoRequest hashtag – using semantic search so a “financial planner” also sees requests for “wealth advisor” or “retirement expert.”

ResponseSource  –  responsesource.com  –  A UK-leaning platform, but frequently used by U.S. experts targeting international press and global trade publications.

Muck Rack  –  muckrack.com  –  Less about inbound requests, more about outbound pitching – a journalist database and media monitoring tool for consultants ready to pitch proactively instead of waiting for the phone to ring.

Roxhill Media  –  roxhillmedia.com  –  A UK-based media database offering real-time alerts and detailed reporter filtering, often paired with U.S. platforms for a broader net.

Press Hunt  –  presshunt.co  –  A pitching and contact-discovery tool built for founders and consultants who’d rather go find the journalist than wait for a request to appear.

Terkel  –  terkel.io  –  A Q&A-style platform (now folded into the Featured ecosystem) where short expert answers get compiled into roundup articles – quick wins for busy professionals.

Why This Matters If You’re the Expert, Not the Journalist

Let’s say you’re an actuarial consultant. Nobody at a dinner party wants to hear about mortality tables, but a personal-finance journalist absolutely does when writing about how life insurance premiums are calculated. Or you’re a scuba instructor in the Florida Keys, and a travel writer needs a quote about decompression sickness for a bucket-list dive story. Or you’re a real estate broker in Austin, and a reporter wants to know if the market has finally cooled off. In every case, you hold exactly the kind of specific, quotable knowledge that separates a mediocre article from a great one – and the journalist needs you as much as you need them. This is not a favor. It’s a trade.

The return on one good placement is rarely just one link. A quote in a well-regarded outlet becomes a website testimonial, a LinkedIn post, a talking point in your next sales pitch, and – increasingly – raw material AI answer engines pull from when someone asks “who’s a good actuarial consultant” or “best scuba instructor near Key Largo.” Publications with genuine editorial standards are, by most industry accounts, disproportionately cited by tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews. Translation: getting quoted today can make you the answer to a question someone asks an AI six months from now.

The Pitch: Making Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse

A word of caution, because every good crime family needs rules. Generic answers get ignored. Reporters wade through dozens, sometimes hundreds, of responses per query, and roughly 14% to 20% of well-crafted pitches actually get used, according to industry tracking – with the strongest platforms landing closer to that upper number. The losers are the pitches that read like a form letter from a guy who “handles all of marketing” and cc’s fourteen people. The winners are specific, fast, and quotable in one sentence a reporter can lift straight into the piece.

So respond within the first hour if you can. Lead with the quote itself – don’t bury it under three paragraphs of your company’s origin story. And answer only what’s actually being asked; nobody wants your director’s cut. As the man once said about half his family’s business dealings: “It’s not personal, it’s strictly business.” That’s the entire philosophy of a good HARO-style pitch, right there.

The Bottom Line

Whether you’re crunching numbers, checking scuba tanks, closing on a duplex, or building someone’s retirement plan, there is a journalist out there right now who needs exactly what you know. The platforms above – free, paid, niche, and general – exist purely to introduce you to that reporter before your competitor beats you to it. Sign up for two or three, set up alerts, and treat every request like it’s an audition for credibility you can’t buy at any price. Because in this business, the smartest operators don’t wait for the press to find them – they make the introduction themselves.