I Built a Startup in 24 Hours

Answering journalist source requests is one of the best ways to earn real editorial backlinks. When a reporter quotes you, the article often credits and links to your site. That's journalist-request link building in a nutshell. The hard part is the volume: dozens of requests a day, tight deadlines, and most of them aren't a fit for you.

I gave myself 24 hours to build a tool that fixes that. The result is LinkBuilder AI, a journalist request assistant that helps you find the requests worth answering and pitch them faster.

Can't see the video? Watch the 24-hour build on YouTube.

Who It's For

LinkBuilder AI is for SEOs, founders and agencies who earn backlinks by answering journalist requests (also called PR link building, digital PR link building or journalist-request link building). If you've been looking for a tool that helps you sort and answer requests without handing your pitches over to AI, this is the link building tool I built for that.

Looking for a Press Release Assistant?

A lot of people searching for a press release assistant want the same result LinkBuilder AI is built for: getting mentioned and linked in the media. A press release assistant helps you write and send announcements to journalists. LinkBuilder AI works the other way around. Journalists post what they need, and it helps you find the requests that fit you and answer them in your own words.

If you're comparing a press release assistant with a journalist request assistant, here's the short version:

• Press release assistant: you announce your news and hope a journalist picks it up. Press release backlinks from distribution sites are usually nofollow.
• LinkBuilder AI: you answer a journalist who is already asking for a source like you.

Plenty of SEOs use both. LinkBuilder AI isn't a press release assistant, but if you want the backlinks from news sites you'd hope to get from a press release assistant, answering journalist requests is a more direct route.

What It Does

• Paste any request. Copy a journalist request from a source-request service, social media or email. AI pulls out the reporter, outlet, deadline and topics for you.
• See what fits. Each request gets a 0–100 fit score against your own expertise profile, with a short private note explaining why it's a match.
• Pitch with your own words. You pitch using human-written templates you create, starting from your own journalist pitch template. Save your best answer and reuse it for similar requests. AI never writes or edits your pitches, which helps you stay within the rules of request services that ban AI-generated pitches.
• Send, schedule or get sign-off. Send pitches by email with replies going to your own inbox, schedule them for later, or route them to a teammate for approval.
• Track your links. Log each backlink you earn, including the article, the page it links to, and whether it's dofollow or nofollow.

Why I Built It

I ran into this problem myself. Sorting through requests took longer than writing the pitches. I wanted one place to see which requests were worth my time, pitch journalists quickly in my own voice, and keep a record of what actually turned into links.

LinkBuilder AI helps with sorting and organizing. It doesn't promise coverage. Journalists still choose who to quote, and a good pitch still needs real expertise behind it.

Try It

If you answer journalist requests, give LinkBuilder AI a try and see if it saves you time.

Start your free trial at linkbuilderai.xyz

Have questions first? Book a 15-minute call with me.