I've done two press releases at PRWeb, the results are as follows PR Release One - $80.00 Expat Medical Offering Terror Insurance in Response to Huge Demand Reads: 52,950 Estimated Pickup: 971 Prints: 9 Forwards: 2 PDF Downloads: 185 Release Date: Sep 5, 2006 PR Release Two - $200.00 How Will Your Lifestyle Affect Your Future Health? Reads: 168,788 Estimated Pickup: 2,912 Prints: 7 Forwards: 0 PDF Downloads: 34 Release Date: Dec 4, 2006 PR Release Two Appeared briefly in: google and yahoo news Neither of them made it to any real news agencies. Virtually no traffic came from any of these sites. The $200.00 press release gained me more backlinks, however this was completely from scraper sites / Other press release sites.
Just putting the data on there.. I might have done a lot better if I had a better written article, or something more news worthy. I created a similar article on my site and submitted it to digg for free, i got around 200 visitors off of that. I wonder if other people had a similar result with their press releases?
at least the stats are shit.. i'd be rather happy with a view few hundred reads which would be defined as unique users that stay for more then 60 seconds on the page.
Releases aren't "overrated" qwest... most people just don't honestly know how to use them effectively, so they dish out money on distribution, not understanding that there are other elements that are just as important. Klown... the results aren't really surprising, as far as the kinds of sites that picked it up. It was likely partly due to the release or news angle, and partly to do with the distribution outlet. Your data illustrates a point I was making in another thread perfectly though... PRweb stats don't mean much. Reads don't translate into visitors the vast majority of the time, and "pickups" there are nothing more than estimates. Track the titles and site name for a few weeks with alerts, and you'll at least find out if some smaller stories got picked up (it can take them a while to get indexed sometimes - look in the main SE as well as the news engine).
I did a $220 one, these are the stats after 2 weeks: Reads 332,220 Estimated Pickup 2,689 Prints 17 Forwards 0 PDF Downloads 19 I found the article in a few blogs and other news type sites around the net. I think it's worth the money in the long run.
I've used online and offline press releases very effectively. Just to give you an idea I appeared regularly on a show that went to over 40 commercial radio stations across Australia, I was on television and had stories make the front page of the local newspapers several time. If you want that kind of publicity the best way is usually to use an offline press release. Online press releases are a completely different story. If you stop thinking of an online press release as a way to get covered in offline media you'll do far better. The biggest advantages of online press releases are: 1. Backlinks from highly relevant pages with high Google page ranks 2. Traffic if you write the press release so they're FORCED to visit your website for some kind of juicy information or gift. I have driven thousands of visitors to websites from single prweb.com press releases so it can be done. But if you're looking for media coverage use faxed press releases and ocntact the media in person (the most effective way of all to get local media coverage). Kindest regards, Andrew Cavanagh