I am hoping someone can help me understand the numbers I am getting for the press release that I submitted last week. Here are the numbers from PRWeb.com: Reads: 74,872 Estimated Pickup: 440 Prints: 6 Forwards: 0 PDF Downloads: 11 I paid $80 so I guess that explains the high number of reads. But what exactly does "Estimated Pickup" mean? The description states: But that really doesn't help me. Surely the 440 number has a more concrete meaning(?) Does it mean that my PR was used in a story in some way by 440 different media outlets? Anyone? Help! AmCy
AmCy, unfortunately, from my experience it doesn't mean that it was published 440 times, but simply the number of times an official PR/media outlet read it. To be honest, I don't even know how they 'pick it up'
I agree with wwhh. It's been my experience that the number doesn't mean much. It's nice when an editor or media rep contacts you though...
yirmumah, nah its not that. Im also pretty sure its to do with people who read the artical for a certain time frame.
Thanks for all your responses. Well, I'm done worrying about it. A search for my website's URL in the major engines shows that my release has indeed been "picked up" by a wide variety of websites, and that should translate into lots of backlinks, which was the whole point of paying the $80 this time. My server logs still aren't showing any traffic to my site from the PRWeb site; not sure why that is but I'll be patient and see how it goes. Thanks. AmCy
I think nevetS (on the forum here) has had PRweb experience. You might drop him a PM - he's always very helpful
AmCy, to be honest I'd not expect much traffic from PRweb.com or any of the sites your article appears on, most of the sites use the RSS feed from PRweb.com which means the link isn't around for long. The only time I've seen PRweb.com truely work is when media contacts you about featuring your article on a newspaper or news, and usually your story has to be interesting. An eye catching title usually helps. Darren
I guess I've just been lucky then. My PRWeb release was issued 06/11 and I have added several new clients, to my books. If anyone is curious, I made a $40 donation.
Yes, I see what you are talking about. I've done some research and found that many of the sites that are picking up my release are picking it up as a temporary feed. However, I have also found quite a number of sites that have added my release as a permanent link, and that's a good thing. I am now finding a lot more permanent links to my release--and to the website featured in the release--than I was expecting, so I think the $80 was well spent. The real test--for me--will be @ the next G Page Rank update. I am hoping for a jump to PR6 for my site's index page. I am going to do the $80 donation again within a few days for my next release. Interesting Note: Quite a few site owners are profiting from my work, as they are using my free content to effect some high paying AS ads on their sites. Oh well. As long as I make some money I guess I don't mind . AmCy
Has anyone ever received an editorial score of 5 or above for a press release submitted to PRWeb? If so, I wouldn't mind reading your release! AmCy
5 is the top score. I got a 4 for mine, which I had re-written by the PRWebDirect Staff. The reason I didn't get a 5 was that it was really a site announcment and not that newsworthy. I plan on using them again soon. I paid for top placement over a weekend (much cheaper over a weekend) and on Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week, it must have hit the front page of Yahoo News or Google News for a little bit because in a matter of hours I picked up another 100,000+ views. To date, my stats are: 268,650/1,248/0/18/74 It definitely makes a difference to be in the top 5. The spiders came by my new site like crazy after the press release. I mean non-stop. I didn't get a lot of direct click throughs from the PRWeb release, but I didn't really have a compelling reason to. I'm hoping for some newsworthy announcments in the third quarter of this year that will show me a little better click through traffic, but I'm not counting on it. I'm considering a PRNewsWire membership because it reaches a different set of people, but the expense dictates I wait until I have something to write about. I have a new site design that I personally think is pretty cool, and some web utilities that are definitely cool. I'm also working on some viral type things (cool flash stuff and a pretty funny video) that I'm hoping will inspire a few "check this out" e-mails to get sent out. I'm going to try to wrap the releases of these things into consecutive press releases (say 1 a week) to show that the site is steadily improving and in position to be a player. I think that it will require a bit of money to get in the position to be really newsworthy, but at the same time it should be worth the expense in the end if I can just get one major news outlet to talk about my site. It's a gamble, but really I'm gambling on my own work and although I'm new to this web game, I have faith. My wedding site looks pretty junky right now compared to what's coming up soon, but I think a lot of sites go through that in their first iteration. The PRWeb Pickups is a strange number. I don't know what it exactly means, but my backlinks showed that more people published the article than my pickups. I think it's a combination of a) people who open the email and click through to the site and b) people who open the page through an rss feed. It doesn't count a lot of things like reads on Yahoo News, Google News, etc. I have the following theories on PRWeb as a tool: 1) It's great for a site announcement. Throw up a pdf sitemap if you can. I think that's one reason that I had such a successful spidering after my first announcement. 2) For backlinks through rss or scraper based sites, a top 10 listing is best. Most rss feeds ignore more than 10 and many just grab the top 5. There are a lot of people using topic based RSS feeds so finding as many related categories is important. It also is important in the number of places on PRWeb your announcment is located after the first day. SEO is important for your announcement. If you pay over 200 you can put anchor text in there. Also mentioning the web site url in your article several times is important, because I found several sites that used a snippet from the release rather than the headline. Putting the URL in the article title is important to and that's done very rarely from what I can see. 3) In order to attract media, which is a goal you should be targetting if you are using PRWeb you have to have a history of releases, newsworthy content, a press page on your site, and a reason for them to write about you - i.e. not just is it newsworthy but why do their readers want to hear about you. Timing is important as well. For instance, I paid for top position on Saturday or Sunday because that was the most cost effective way to gain the highest benefit from PRWeb - my target wasn't necessarily media, but the SE's and It gave me sitewide linking, prominent link positioning, and the biggest variety of inbound links. For targetting media, you have to think about when they are looking to write about you. Thinking about my situation with a wedding site, typically news outlets publish a wedding section on wednesdays or thursdays. Tuesday is the day they are looking for something to fill the gaps. Deciding whether to avoid a heavy news week (like for instance a big celebrity wedding going on that week) is something I have to think about more. It may get more mainstream media attention since the topic of the week is weddings, but for wedding section type outlets they will probably already be stuffed with content. On a heavy news week, if I wanted in I probably want to be published on Monday instead of Tuesday because I don't want them to fill up their section before they see my press release. Thursday is no good because the printing deadline has passed. Friday is no good because they will have days to forget about me and wedding editors don't work 7 days a week. Getting 3 solid press releases published in a month will probably have somebody thinking "hey - these guys are doing something over there, I should check them out", but 1 press release every once in a blue moon won't have that effect. Also, when trying for coverage it is best to do more than just PRWeb. PRNewswire is good to, but the more I research, I'm finding out that people use those tools in addition to directly sending releases to contacts at media outlets that are likely to pick them up - local news stations and papers, on topic periodicals, etc. They check their fax machine more frequently than PRWeb, or PRNewswire but if you hit up all three, it's more likely they will read it - assuming good title and lead in. These guys have sources up the kazoo for article content, so they don't spend a lot of time reviewing. It's more of a "catch my eye" type of thing. 4) Frequent free or low paid press releases keep building you up a history. This is something I've largely ignored working on other things, but it is something I need to pay more attention to. Spend the money for placement when it is purpose driven - either when you really have something good, or when you really want good link placement. 5) It's well worth it to at least once pay for a re-write or a custom write from PRWebDirect or another press release writer that is SEO minded. (They have an SEO package, but their $70 rewrite still involved SEO. My article didn't change much, but it changed in ways that I'm not sure I can really reproduce myself with consistency. They really hit up a lot more keywords and topics than I thought about. 6) I still want to figure out how to get an image up there. I uploaded an image but it didn't show up on the prweb page - only on the press release page. 7) don't forget - over $200 contribution and you can do anchor text. 8) Upload pdfs, word docs, etc. to support your release and put live links in there. It is definitely a way to get good anchor text links up. 9) Don't expect a mountain of traffic. People read the article and move on. Click through rates are low. The benefits are with media attention and with SEO. If you have something in there like "click through this link to get a $50 discount" or "people who follow this link may win a flat screen monitor" will probably increase CTR.
Ahhhhhhh!!!! You know, I have just returned to my computer, having just showered, and I was just about to search the web to find out why some people can have anchor text when the PRWeb PR submit form says, "NO HTML TAGS." Thank you! You have saved me some serious time here. I appreciate your detailed reply . I have only scanned your message; I will read fully once I settle down and get a beer. Earlier today, I submitted 2 more releases that I am very happy with and I am expecting great things. Both got a score of 4 . All my previous releases got scores of 3 or less I've only recently gotten back into the flow of serious writing, and it takes a while to get back the writing mojo--you know what I mean ! Heh...I am very keen on SEO and establishing long term backlinks to my sites so yeah: I've got that covered in my releases. Now I'm all stressed out because I soooooooo want to have anchor text in my releases, especially my credit card release, but I'm not sure if I can justify spending an additional $120 <gulp> What a long day. Press release writing is quite stressful when you have to wear 2 hats: the writer and the editor. I may pay for editorial services next time. My hair is a bit grayer after today's back and forth with my releases! AmCy
Why wouldn't they include this info in their "Chart of Additional Services Rendered With Contribution?????????????" Would have saved me a lot of time if they had that info in there, where it belongs! AmCy
LOL. I saw the page that tells about it once and it took me two days to find it again. The Chart of Additional Services doesn't go up to $200. I think they want to avoid people abusing it, and I also think that using that makes the pdf file a little screwy. (I seem to remember seeing a problem, I forget what it was). It also gets people to use their SEO service who can't find that document, because that's pretty much what you would do if you couldn't figure it out - at least you would call them and then they have an opportunity to upsell you. There are a few other bonuses I seem to recall finding out about that are undocumented, but I checked through my blog and apparently I didn't write them down. In regards to my previous post about the huge boost in views, it must have been on the front page of Yahoo News because they account for 64% of my page views. I was also pretty public about what I was doing - posting updates about my experience with PRWeb here, in another forum, and on my blog and I wonder if maybe they didn't decide to give me a boost to help with their own PR. Really wierd that I got over 100,000 views of my article several days after it was published. Maybe it was a slow news day, I don't know . As far as I could find, I didn't see any posts out there for people who actually paid for the top spot and commented on whether it was worth the money. Personally, I think it is, because for $300 or less you end up with a lot of backlinks and great exposure on several sites. And additionally if you are trying for some attention from the media, it could be worth the $400-600 during the week for that top spot. People wouldn't be fighting for it if it wasn't worth it - and there are several people pretty much every weekday with at least 8 or 10 stars up there. It's a tool like everything else, and you shouldn't blow your whole budget on it, but even comparing our numbers, that's a pretty dramatic difference and with an $80 contribution you were probably pretty high up there. My stats dropped off pretty dramatically after about a week, but a few extra thousand since I published two or three months ago. The key point for people looking into doing this is that article views do not translate into click throughs. Not even 1 percent with my press release. I don't know if you know this trick, but if you are paying $80 - you should be doing a custom payment of at least $81 to place your article at least above all the other $80 pay ins. And I think $100 or $121 gets you something, but I forget what it is. Oh yeah, I think PRWebDirect is $119 - but for $1 more you get one more star and are above the other PRWebDirect users.
My frustration mounts. I just piad $121 more (thank much for the tip on bidding above $200 ) yet I still can't figure out how to add anchor text. Form is returning errors. Ugg! I really have no patience for this nonsense. AmCy
http://www.yourdomain.com [your anchor text] One space between the url and bracket. It's not a regular html formatted link. If you log in to your account, then click support, then knowledge base, the faq article is on the bottom of the right column.
OK, I found the info. I was actually on that page last night and I missed it. Why isn't their site and Knowledge Base searchable???? Yes, I'm just full of complaints about PRWeb! The good news is I am already seeing a very big jump in traffic for the release that went online this morning. I am very excitied to see how the next release fares--it's due to go online tomorrow morning. I think the upgrade will payoff, though I may have to have bread and water for lunch this week I'm off to add my anchor text now. Thanks again for your help nevetS! AmCy
Regarding PRWeb: I just ran across these PRWeb postings a few moments ago, and thought I might add some quick bullet-points to fill in the blanks: 1) Here is an additional point you can add to your links on PRWeb: http://www.richcontent.com [RichContent Brainstorming Software __title__ This is Where you can Add Title Tags to your Link] It works pretty well, very much like a traditional Title tag (or ALT Image tag) when formatting links in PRWeb releases. 2) Putting out a press release is great. Adding a few bucks (we recommend a minimum $80 to our clients, but find that $100-$150 really cranks things up in terms of results) makes a world of difference in your results. And if you can "que" your release, and get it submitted a few days before it runs, you'll find that you gai some additional traffic and backlinks. 3) If you really want to see your PRWeb release scream in terms of adding backlinks and total results, do a SERIES of releases, 1-2 per week, for 12-16 weeks. I know that sounds like forever, but here's what happens: on the bottom of each release you have LINKS to each of your other press releases in that same category (PRWeb has a Category and custom RSS selector that you can apply to each release). So each NEW release adds momemtum to your last releases within the same category. Start "stacking" releases and you find the oldest have many hundreds to thousands more clicks than the new ones. (ex. We have one from may 2003 that now has over 3,000 clicks, and over 200,000 title views. Our newest in that category has 45,000 title views and 481 clicks). 4) We have used PRWeb for a client as a "beta" of possible results, starting in may 2003. After 6 months we had received 65,000 results on a google search, a little over 90,000 on a Yahoo search, and our sales for that client went to 4x over the previous period a year earlier. You can find a free PDF ebook covering PRWeb operation for first-time users at www.prwebquickstart.com. The site is in its infancy, but coming along quickly, and the ebook will also be updated this next week. Look for the SEO/SEM and what PRWeb calls their Online Visibility Engine ebook coming by month end. Thanks much, and I hope this helps! Best, ME