http://www.cutelittlehats.com/press/ Since this is the marketing area, I thought I'd ask the marketers to take a look at my new site. I'd like to know what you expect out of a press release web-site. I'd also like some feedback on the SEO of the the site. I'd like to know what is missing and what could be improved to make articles rank higher. One of the things I've done away with that is common to press release sites is the captcha. Rather than fighting a losing battle and annoying people, I've decided to simply require that e-mail addresses be validated. When you sign up you'll get an e-mail with an activation link. Just click the link and your account will be activated and you'll be able to log in. After that you can submit as many press releases as you want. cutelittlehats.com may be a temporary domain for the site. Let me know if you like, hate or whatever.
I don't like the name at all for a press release site... people looking for distribution sites are all business, and "cute" has no place in PR, although a lot of people make that mistake when writing releases and headlines (coming from someone who runs a PR firm). Frankly, there are too many of these basic free-for-all press release sites springing up, and most have no value whatsoever. If you want yours taken seriously in time, here's the bare minimum of what it's going to need: 1. An editor - if you accept every post/release, the site is worthless. It means you'll never be able to offer real coverage for people with legitimate news, and you won't be worth their time. You can also get into a good bit of trouble by posting false releases if you're not screening them. 2. Guaranteed placements in at least Yahoo! News and Google News... additional news engines are great too of course. (This is another reason you need an editor... publishing releases that aren't factual because you're not checking anything at all can get your site banned from Google news and such.) 3. Get connected to an actual newswire service so submissions actually reach legitimate members of the media... even if it's only for upgraded members. 4. Get some PR value to your own site if you want to convince people it's worthwhile to post for the backlinks (it's really never worth it for backlinks based on your main page's PR, but most people are too naive to realize it, so you'll still attract a lot of submissions that way).
I agree with jhmattern's thoughts on the domain name. It has very little relevancy to your site and "cute" isn't something you should be using. I'd also focus a little more on the aesthetic features of the site. At the moment it's a little plain (which isn't always a bad thing in the world of PR sites), but a few web 2.0-ish graphics should spruce it up a bit.
Speaking of domain names for press release sites.. I own both of these domains.. enounces.com enounced.com I was eventually going to do a press release site on them, however if the price was right, I may consider selling them
The domain name is actually for my wife's business. It's highly appropriate for her use since she'll be selling hand-made cute little hats. I'm using it for now because I just wanted to test out the site and get the htaccess file working. GoDaddy has quirks in that area, especially when you have multiple domains on the same account. Before I spend money on a real domain for it I want to see what kind of prospects a site like this has and what should be added to it to make it more appealing to the market I'm going for. What is the process of getting content into Google News? *edit* http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003934.html */edit* The site has two types of press releases, everyone and featured. "Featured" means that it's of the quality necessary to be submitted to Google/Yahoo News. An admin has to set a press release to featured at which point it shows up on the front page of the site. So that issue is covered. Everything that is submitted is visible on the site but only admin approved submissions get submitted to other news sites. And the look will be updated. I always worry about graphics and colors last because every site I've ever made has been overhauled in that area on a number of occasions. I design sites to be flexible enough so that aesthetic changes can be done without much effort.
As long as the site looks professional, I would not make it too fancy. Do you plan on adding the ole' about us, contact and privacy pages to your site? I know Google is supposed to be really factoring those in.....plus some more company information will encourage more sign-ups.... Jack
this could be the weirdest site ever Buy My Cute Little Hats....and submit your press release!?!?! UhhhhhHH?
I said it was a temporary location. If the press release site is a viable idea (meaning it can make more than the cost of the domain name in a year) then it'll get its own domain. I just want to find out what's involved with a press release site before putting money into it.
You'll need every release (even free ones) to go through an editor if you don't want to risk having the entire site banned from inclusion in Google news. It happened to a pretty big free press release distribution site a while back. Will it earn more than the cost of a domain? Of course it will. It'll do that within a month at max I'd imagine... maybe even a few hours or days. (Speaking of which, I have a domain or two I was originally going to use for a similar idea until I found something better. If you'd like to know them, PM me, and if you're interested, I may sell one to you cheaply since I simply have no use for them right now). You'll earn money by: A) Ads on free press release pages. B) Upgrade fees for upgraded releases and features. But keep in mind that this isn't the kind of site to just stick online and watch the money come in. You will have to work hard and long on it to become any kind of player, even among free sites. You'll need to review every release coming in to weed out garbage and spam. You'll need to spend a good bit of time marketing it to get the word out. etc.
Thanks for the advice. I'll add in a "needs review" tab to the admin section. That process could also be easily done through e-mail. It's going to be at least a month before the site is ready to go live. I want to get all the functionality going first and make sure the design is decent. I figured this would be a worthwhile project since I could use it myself and it a type of site I've never done before.
Now when a press release is submitted, its emailed to the owner of the site (in this case me) with a couple links to either approve or decline the press release. Until it's approved, it doesn't show up on the site. I also added a "contact us." Its a straight e-mail address currently but that's easy enough to switch to a form. Another detail to fix is the account page which lists the press releases you've submitted. It needs to be organized better and have some icons to indicate the status of a press release (spam, approved, featured, live links, etc)
Keep going.....it is a good idea. I think that you have gotten some really good ideas on how to improve it. Jack
One of the things I think I'm going to add is the ability for new writers to post their stories without going through my web-site. Instead of having to log in and go to the form and copy and paste things in, they'll be able to use their own custom tool to post that information to my site using a per account key. So while people are auto posting things to other sites they can put mine in the mix. If I'm feeling ambitious I may even offer custom gateways so if they're already posting certain things to other sites, they don't have to write custom software for my site. I'll write the code on my end to translate their data to my site. Of course those articles will go through the same review process as ones submited through the form on the site.
I've added the ability to submit press releases without registering and with no captcha http://www.cutelittlehats.com/press/?page=submit_release Registered users get a bypass key which they can use to create the form located there. I may be able to do some kind of incentive such as that for every X number of press releases submitted through the form they put on their own sites they get free links in one of their press releases. The final domain I go with will be working off the same database so any submissions and registrations made at the current location will not be lost.