5 Ways Free Press Release Sites Can Cost You

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Yes, free press release sites can and do cost the uninformed and even the experienced marketer. Some of the costs are screamingly obvious others are more hidden. And it’s my role as your advocate to review and reveal them all. Let’s roll!

OK, so you’ve written your press release. Next action: online press release distribution. Now If you’re stuck in terms of a press release distribution strategy, here’s an earlier article about choosing between horizontal and vertical distribution.

(Editor’s Note: feedback please! Take the press release distribution poll at the bottom of this article to help us better gauge topics for future articles.)

Now the purpose of this article is to examine free press release sites-and more importantly-to realize that free doesn’t always mean no-cost. As a big believer of online press releases, consider me amazed, even dumbfounded when a new blog post or tweet surfaces with a BIG list of free press release sites.

So I wondered, am I missing something? Only one way to find out-dig in and do some due diligence. Curious about what I discovered? Well, my search turned up more questions than answers.

A sampling: first, where’s the context? Do I submit an online press release to all those sites? Some of those sites? Which free press release sites do better with the media? Is there software available that will mass submit to those sites? How do free press release sites perform vs. paid sites? What metrics do these sites provide or am I on my own in determining the release’s success or lack thereof?

Yes, my mind was whirring with questions each in search of answers. Here’s the challenge: most of my experience is with paid press release sites and newswires. Of course, some of you reading this now have limited experience in online press release distribution either free or paid.

So consider this foray into the free press release world an educational experience for both of us. And with that in mind…

5 Ways Free Press Release Sites Can Cost You

1. Extra time investment

Time is money. When you pay to distribute online press releases you can often rely on just one service, especially if you use big, established newswires like PR Newswire, BusinessWire and Marketwire. Even PRWeb can provide enough coverage to justify just using a single provider.

However, those newswires are often not budget-friendly, especially for small businesses. So it’s only natural to turn to lower cost or even free press release sites. Dana Willhoit author of “Press Release Stomper” advocates distribution of several free press release sites with every release. Christine Kelly of OnlinePRNews.com has also recommended using multiple free press release sites with every release.

So instead of using one provider now you’re using several. Each press release site has its own interface, its own unique requirements, its own nuances, upgrades, etc.

What’s more, in my tests, adding hyperlinks to press release copy boosts traffic. Yet, some of these providers require a fair amount of hoop jumping, even to the extent of creating your release in an HTML editor and creating clean HTML code to be effective.

And unlike the major press release sites, you’ll need to plan ahead. Many free press release sites have limited editorial desk/customer service hours, often requiring you submit your online press release 48 hours in advance.

Takeaway: is the extra time you’re spending on increased labor worth what you’re saving by going the free route? With some economical press release sites, we’re talking anywhere from $20 – $100 for some good performance results.

2. Online exposure and visibility

One reason to use multiple free press release sites is that you can’t rely on a single free press release site to deliver the typical coverage and exposure you receive from a paid site. Granted, you can increase visibility by paying to upgrade (see #3) but then that’s not a free press release site and it is costing you, right?

Even with the upgrades, I’m not convinced you’ll duplicate the exposure you’ll receive from paid press release sites.

So how do you know what kind of online exposure and visibility to expect? The chart below is a quick, rather unscientific snapshot with a specific outcome. Specifically, the level of penetration in Google News and Yahoo! News. Seeing lots of listings is impacted by the following factors:

  1. Quantity of releases submitted. That’s one reason why PRnewswire typically has the greatest number, simply because that’s the preferred choice of many companies and PR companies.
  2. Quality. Search engines give preferred treatment to more established newswires and press release sites.
  3. Syndication/aggregation. Some press release sites (PR-Inside.com for example) often pick up newsfeeds from other newswires and press release sites.

sevisibility400px1

 

If you’re considering using a free press release site, do a quick search in the news search engines and see what exposure that press release site is getting. Just search site: (insert press release site url). If you don’t see a lot of listings, I’d go with a newswire that has more activity and better search engine penetration.

Takeaway: Again, there is a time component, since you’ll need to submit to multiple free sites to get the exposure you’d receive from one of the paid sites.

3. Upgrades = extra cost

Now this is an area that gets right to the bottom line. How do free press release sites stay in business? Well, advertising revenue is one way. Another is an upgrade fee.

Here’s the rub: just about anything extra is an upgrade. Even worse, the upgrades are not consistent from site to site. You’ll need to invest some time just familiarizing yourself with the various upgrades, if they’re worth the investment and how that impacts your marketing budget.

In fact, in a review of about 15 different free press release sites, I counted 25 different upgrades. Here’s a sample:

  1. Speed of approval
  2. Speed of distribution
  3. Higher placement on page (above free listings)
  4. Preferred/showcased listing
  5. Distribution: more sites
  6. Other/social media
  7. More industry categories
  8. Placement in additional newsfeeds
  9. More words
  10. Formatting: bold / italic text
  11. Archiving
  12. Media Attachments: images, video, pdf, mp2
  13. Ad-free page

Takeaway: free sometimes costs money, especially for features and functionality that are already bundled in with paid newswires. Again, compare and contrast. Ordering numerous upgrades ala carte may end up costing more than a paid newswire that includes several at one fixed price.

To be clear, I’m not 100% anti-upgrade. Yet, in the spirit of transparency, we are talking free vs. paid. So freebie seeker and buyer beware.

4. Performance metrics/course correcting

At a high level, you can view online press release metrics in two camps: external and internal. External includes search engine performance, keyword ranking, press release views/downloads and backlinks. Internal refers to how that traffic shows up to your website: visitors, conversions, etc.

Many of the paid press release sites provide helpful website stats. (Although I find the “number of reads” stat suspect. These are not human eyeballs, often it’s a site that receives a press release constitutes as a read. )

Still, if you use the same press release sites consistently, key benchmarks begin to emerge. For example, when I use PRWeb, I consider a number of reads plus headline impressions of 75,000 a good indicator of decent exposure. Looking at the screen capture from my PRweb account you’ll notice the overall number of this release was considerably higher, 246,282. )

prwebstats

Takeaway: with free press release sites, performance metrics range from sketchy to non-existent. Many free and even paid providers offer more robust metrics for-you guessed it – an upgrade.

Another takeaway: there’s an old saying “you can’t improve what you can’t measure.” Because of the limited nature of free press release metrics, you gain less market knowledge and insights that you can funnel into future releases, thus improving performance over the long term.

5. Staying power

One of my most effective online PR strategies is creating evergreen content somewhere in the press release. That way, when the release is found via a keyword search, there is content still deemed relevant to the user.

Whether it be from my own experience or that of my clients and customers, there has been a consistent phenomenon: when journalists are performing research for a story, they turn to the same place we do for the information: the search engines. In so doing, it’s possible to get media coverage days, weeks, months, even years after your release was originally submitted.

Takeaway: One key factor determining this is exactly where your press release ranks for keyword searches. Again, the search engines seem to reward the more established newswires. And keep in mind if you use a free press release site and you don’t pay for archiving, then you have ZERO staying power.

Again, in my tests the paid newswires seem to have better staying power. Granted, there are many variables that impact this. I’m only coming from my place of experience. If you have a different experience, please enlighten US with your comment.

Conclusion and recommendations:

Knowing what you know now, if you’re still comfortable with free press release sites, have at it. At least you know what to watch out for. And you can always outsource the distribution and let someone else worry about stayingcurrent on all the pluses and minuses.

I’m also hoping to hear from some free press release sites people and have them state their case. If nothing else, by bringing some of these challenges to light, here’s hoping they up their game and perhaps standardizing what’s free vs. what’s paid. Right now, with all the upgrades, it’s all over the map.

I will continue testing free press release sites further and will report back what I find. You may wonder as to why I didn’t include specific case study results from using free press release sites.

A point well taken as my views are shaped by my experience at an aggregate level. Again, I’m coming from own area of experience, which is via paid newswires.

To present all sides of the story as a benefit to my readers, I’ll be interviewing Dana Willhoit, an expert on free press release sites to gain further insights into this area of Online PR. Do watch for that coming soon. And I’m open to interviewing execs at free press release sites as well.

Please take the poll and leave your reply to this post.

Story highlights and action steps:

  • Time to review: 14 minutes
    • Know your distribution strategy going in, let that guide free vs. paid choice
    • Free sites do not mean no cost, many include extra charges for service upgrades
    • Free sites can have obvious costs (upgrades) and more hidden costs (time investment, performance, metrics, etc.)
    • Free sites can and do work, but more are needed for effectiveness of each release distributed
  • Related Resources:
    • Dana Willhoit, Press Release Stomper.
    • PR Traffic System for optimized press releases
  • Action Steps:
    • Review this online press release distribution article for strategy insights.
    • Comprehensive directory of press release sites coming soon. Sign up for 30MinutePR tips (top of the page) to get on the notification list.
    • Test! Use a free press release site and a paid press release site for each release and measure results. And report back the outcome via the comments below.
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

    84 Comments

  • Marc Harty says:

    Dave,

    Thanks and I will. And please report back on your results…it’s all about best practices and ROI these days.

  • Marc Harty says:

    Jason,

    Thanks. I’ll take a look. How about that interview request? Also, saw you’ve added Des Walsh to your team.

    Great guy. But you already knew that. I had a chance to spend some time with him at BlogWorld Expo a while back.

  • Marc Harty says:

    Jason,

    Thanks. I’ll take a look. How about that interview request? Also, saw you’ve added Des Walsh to your team.

    Great guy. But you already knew that. I had a chance to spend some time with him at BlogWorld Expo a while back.

  • reiki says:

    Nice list. Would include some of this with analysis in my blog where i’m defining the step by step guide to making money online. and PR is one of definite strategies to be kept as part of overall plan.

    Thanks.

  • reiki says:

    Nice list. Would include some of this with analysis in my blog where i’m defining the step by step guide to making money online. and PR is one of definite strategies to be kept as part of overall plan.

    Thanks.

  • Eye opening, to say the least. I wish I had the revenue to invest in a good press release. My question is, “what is the best route for a geographically unique organization?” In other words, if the organization’s needs are more in line with local media picking up the release.

  • Eye opening, to say the least. I wish I had the revenue to invest in a good press release. My question is, “what is the best route for a geographically unique organization?” In other words, if the organization’s needs are more in line with local media picking up the release.

  • This is a very great article. But I disagree with you on a lot of points. The rules have changed and I do not see power in the hand of journalists as it used to be.

    Take for instance, the news about Van Jones, the mainstream media did not break the story. It all started from blogosphere. Bloggers broke the story and it ends up on Fox news.

    The questionyou should be asking is: How many PR get submitted via these newswires get results? By results, I am asking is there any performance metrics out there? Take for instance, 1000 businesses submit PR to PRNewswire, do all these PRs get picked up by journalists? How many of these PRs get submitted/picked by Google News/Yahoo News (2 news aggregator leaders)? How many times do potential customers view these PRs via Google News/Yahoo News?

    Here is what I am trying to say. Google/Yahoo will not feature PR News on their home page unless it is newsworthy in the first place. The other way for these PR news to be seen by people is only when potential customers perform a search on something of interest.

    With that said, when a potential customer goes to Google and perform a basic search. The customers does not care where the results come from. He scans through the SERP and picks what interest him.

    So here is the point I am trying to make. The Internet has changed the rules of the game, especially for the little guys. With SEO, Social Media, Twitter and blogosphere, the power is no longer in the hand of the privilege fews.

    The best way to get noticed for smaller companies with no millions of dollars in advertising budget is to leverage the power of the Internet. Below are some of the things you a small business with little PR budget can do to improve its online visibility:

    #1 SEO (get a lot of backlinks/inbound links, web page titles with quality keywords related to your service and products, vanity URLs and many more). Long tail keywords are also great. Short tail keywords are expensive
    #2 Twitter – Leverage twitters and get as many followers as you can.
    #3 Social Media – Create FaceBook page, LinkedIn and many more
    #4 Viral ideas – Leverage the power of YouTube (remember the wedding dance video, Will Blend anything etc.)
    #5 Create Feedback contests for your service/products – you get more traffic and more opt-in emails for a small budget.
    #6 Contribute to blogs and forums – Don’t spam.
    #7 For local business owners, use Google Local Business center, Yelp reviews, Yahoo Local Business, Post your business profile on credible websites like DMOZ, BOTW, LocalBusinessUSA.com and many more.
    #8 Follow Google guidelines on you can improve your ranking – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

    These are just few things you can do get more publicity for your service/products and websites. Most of these things can be done for free. If you don’t have time, you can outsource most of these services to small companies for a very small fee.

    Thanks

    Sarah
    http://www.PRNewsExpress.com

  • This is a very great article. But I disagree with you on a lot of points. The rules have changed and I do not see power in the hand of journalists as it used to be.

    Take for instance, the news about Van Jones, the mainstream media did not break the story. It all started from blogosphere. Bloggers broke the story and it ends up on Fox news.

    The questionyou should be asking is: How many PR get submitted via these newswires get results? By results, I am asking is there any performance metrics out there? Take for instance, 1000 businesses submit PR to PRNewswire, do all these PRs get picked up by journalists? How many of these PRs get submitted/picked by Google News/Yahoo News (2 news aggregator leaders)? How many times do potential customers view these PRs via Google News/Yahoo News?

    Here is what I am trying to say. Google/Yahoo will not feature PR News on their home page unless it is newsworthy in the first place. The other way for these PR news to be seen by people is only when potential customers perform a search on something of interest.

    With that said, when a potential customer goes to Google and perform a basic search. The customers does not care where the results come from. He scans through the SERP and picks what interest him.

    So here is the point I am trying to make. The Internet has changed the rules of the game, especially for the little guys. With SEO, Social Media, Twitter and blogosphere, the power is no longer in the hand of the privilege fews.

    The best way to get noticed for smaller companies with no millions of dollars in advertising budget is to leverage the power of the Internet. Below are some of the things you a small business with little PR budget can do to improve its online visibility:

    #1 SEO (get a lot of backlinks/inbound links, web page titles with quality keywords related to your service and products, vanity URLs and many more). Long tail keywords are also great. Short tail keywords are expensive
    #2 Twitter – Leverage twitters and get as many followers as you can.
    #3 Social Media – Create FaceBook page, LinkedIn and many more
    #4 Viral ideas – Leverage the power of YouTube (remember the wedding dance video, Will Blend anything etc.)
    #5 Create Feedback contests for your service/products – you get more traffic and more opt-in emails for a small budget.
    #6 Contribute to blogs and forums – Don’t spam.
    #7 For local business owners, use Google Local Business center, Yelp reviews, Yahoo Local Business, Post your business profile on credible websites like DMOZ, BOTW, LocalBusinessUSA.com and many more.
    #8 Follow Google guidelines on you can improve your ranking – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

    These are just few things you can do get more publicity for your service/products and websites. Most of these things can be done for free. If you don’t have time, you can outsource most of these services to small companies for a very small fee.

    Thanks

    Sarah
    http://www.PRNewsExpress.com

  • NIFT says:

    I just found your web site for the first time and I think it is marvelous — an extremely valuable, well written and well thoughout presentation. Your list is a very good tool also and the comments very enlightening. I learned a lot. I just added you to my favorites and will be back.

  • NIFT says:

    I just found your web site for the first time and I think it is marvelous — an extremely valuable, well written and well thoughout presentation. Your list is a very good tool also and the comments very enlightening. I learned a lot. I just added you to my favorites and will be back.

  • Marc Harty says:

    Thanks for you kind words and feedback. You’ll be seeing more regular posts from me in the coming months. Welcome aboard!

    ~ Marc

  • Marc Harty says:

    Thanks for you kind words and feedback. You’ll be seeing more regular posts from me in the coming months. Welcome aboard!

    ~ Marc

  • Marc Harty says:

    Hi Sarah,

    Thanks for your in depth reply. Your suggestions are valid and I agree with them. And I don’t really think we are in disagreement on several of the points. The purpose of this particular article was to highlight that free is often not free when it comes to press release sites. I’ve had many case studies where individuals have gotten great response from media and customers alike using online press releases.

    I also do a considerable amount of testing of different newswires. Most of my tests have shown better results from paid newswires compared to free ones. And I’m not talking about expensive newswires either. I’m not saying you can’t get results using free press release sites. It just takes more effort and more sites to submit to, that’s all.

    Do you have any case studies you’d like to share from PRNewsExpress.com? I’d love to hear them.

    ~ Marc

  • Marc Harty says:

    Hi Sarah,

    Thanks for your in depth reply. Your suggestions are valid and I agree with them. And I don’t really think we are in disagreement on several of the points. The purpose of this particular article was to highlight that free is often not free when it comes to press release sites. I’ve had many case studies where individuals have gotten great response from media and customers alike using online press releases.

    I also do a considerable amount of testing of different newswires. Most of my tests have shown better results from paid newswires compared to free ones. And I’m not talking about expensive newswires either. I’m not saying you can’t get results using free press release sites. It just takes more effort and more sites to submit to, that’s all.

    Do you have any case studies you’d like to share from PRNewsExpress.com? I’d love to hear them.

    ~ Marc

  • Hi Marc, I really found value in much of this blogpost. Just wondering if money was exchanged on your interchange with PitchEngine.com? Seems the number of repetitions of their name, and absense of any other newswires weighing in over this span of time makes your post, in the end, feel … (and this maybe just for me)… promotional.

    And I’m not talking about promotional as in yourself (it’s your blog, you can sell [yourself] if you want to!) as much as it feels promotional for PitchEngine.com – see you’ve even got me doing it. That’s two more for the team!

    Not sayin’ – Just askin’ as I’m currently trying to figure out just how far down the rabbit hole PR is going with expert-professional blogs -Best, A

  • Hi Marc, I really found value in much of this blogpost. Just wondering if money was exchanged on your interchange with PitchEngine.com? Seems the number of repetitions of their name, and absense of any other newswires weighing in over this span of time makes your post, in the end, feel … (and this maybe just for me)… promotional.

    And I’m not talking about promotional as in yourself (it’s your blog, you can sell [yourself] if you want to!) as much as it feels promotional for PitchEngine.com – see you’ve even got me doing it. That’s two more for the team!

    Not sayin’ – Just askin’ as I’m currently trying to figure out just how far down the rabbit hole PR is going with expert-professional blogs -Best, A

  • Marc Harty says:

    Hi Anna,

    Thanks for your comment and sorry for my belated reply. And to be 100% transparent, zero money exchanged hands
    between me and PitchEngine. I like them because they have the social media side of things figured out. Perhaps in
    my enthusiasm for them, I went overboard.

    I do pride myself as both a professional and a blogger/journalist, so I like to maintain my objectivity. While I do have
    recommendations, I am not owner or paid by any of those press release sites.

    Thanks for letting me know how this landed for you. And I’ll take your comments to heart in future posts.

    ~ Marc

  • Marc Harty says:

    Hi Anna,

    Thanks for your comment and sorry for my belated reply. And to be 100% transparent, zero money exchanged hands
    between me and PitchEngine. I like them because they have the social media side of things figured out. Perhaps in
    my enthusiasm for them, I went overboard.

    I do pride myself as both a professional and a blogger/journalist, so I like to maintain my objectivity. While I do have
    recommendations, I am not owner or paid by any of those press release sites.

    Thanks for letting me know how this landed for you. And I’ll take your comments to heart in future posts.

    ~ Marc

  • Excellent discussion! Hope I'm not too late to post a few quick questions relating to this. Has anyone heard of or used PRBuzz.com? They are currently offering unlimited PR distribution for a flat fee of $299 a year, I believe.

    Also, if we decide to outsource distribution, how would we go about finding a company to do this? E.g. if wanted to have sent on PRNewswire or similar? Expected cost?

    And finally, how can we find out which of these freebie and low cost distribution sites have been around the longest?

    Feel free to follow me @RealtorPR.

  • Marc Harty says:

    TC,

    Never to late because the dialog is always evolving. I have heard of PRBuzz.com but do not have actual experience in using them. I did some checking and it appears that a release sent via PRBuzz is distributed via MMD Newswire. That site can be found here: http://www.massmediadistribution.com which does charge $199 per release, so it looks like you're getting good value with the all in one pricing via PRBuzz.

    The main deciding factor for me is how do those releases rank in the search engines for your keyword phrases? Will your release appear on other authority sites? Those are some of the results I look for.

    In terms of distribution, my company does handle that: http://www.maintopicmedia.com and you can issue a request via my help desk: http://www.maintopicmedia.com/support If we're not the right fit, I'm happy to point you in the direction of some other resources as well.

    In terms of the free sites staying power, an easy way is to do a domain search and look when the domain was reserved. I've created a database of 175+ press release sites that's part of a system called Online PR Made Easy which I sell here: http://www.onlineprmadeeasy.com

    Hope that gives you some more insight on the release distribution game.

    ~ Marc

  • Greg Smith says:

    thanks for sharing the free press release site strategies

  • Greg Smith says:

    thanks for sharing the free press release site strategies

  • Tatyana Gann says:

    Marc

    I am glad you brought it up. I believe we must choose paid press release version first then submit to free ones.. I think free ones are good b ut I agree they cost money for upgrades but also time we create them and then if they do not stay in google for long time then BOOM, nothing happens..
    I appreciate such a great explanation.

    Tatyana Gann

  • mstardom says:

    I beg to differ, somewhat. Your argument is well-taken. Granted that free press release does cost money, there are advantages in using free over paid, especially for beginners. If one is new to the online PR seen, he/she should start off with the free option first, then evaluate results. If results are where one wants to be, then one should continue using the free method. On the other hand, if one can afford to pay the fees for paid press release, one should go right a head and do it. Therefore, the preference between free and paid is up to the individual. After looking at the Search Engine Visibility chart above, one can see that the difference between free and paid press release sites is a little more than two-fold, for the most part, except for PRnewswire, 18k. So, a part from not being listed in Yahoo, it is still a great idea to go the free press release route. There is no guarantee that one will convert visitors into customers after paying for a press release. Therefore, it is a good idea to conduct extensive research before throwing money down the tubes. If money is spent on advertising, a substantial return should be realized immediately or soon after.

    I can vouch for PRlog; the site does send traffic and listings in Google news…that is not bad for a free site. Furthermore, the site provides embedded codes for each press release, which includes PDF file-download capabilities. Here is an example of that http://www.myspacestardom.com/pressroom

  • Local Look for engine is anything which has usually been overlooked and I’m not sure why. Maybe it is mainly because fewer local corporations are conscious of Seo in general or perhaps it is simply because the only companies supplying serp charge a similar rates as “national seo” which entails optimizing for big areas instead of focusing on local markets which could mean the world for your business enterprise.

  • Deb Wier | Get On Google Maps says:

    I just found your blog and I really enjoyed this post. I have never considered using a paid PR service but I will now!

  • Marc Harty says:

    Hi Deb,

    I do think free sites have a place but there is a time component involved and time is money in so many cases.

  • Anonymous says:

    From PR.com’s free service, I constantly get feedback that my press release isn’t about “my company” enough.

    Is it not supposed to be that you release something newsworthy, THEN introduce your company? My release got declined for this headline – “New Service Aims to Bridge Last Entrepreneurial Gap for Women” – because it didn’t contain my company name.

    How many professionally written press releases (especially those taken seriously by the media) have you seen include the company name in the headline? Unless you’re a big-name brand, it is of a strong disadvantage to make your press release look like you’re doing nothing but tooting your own horn right in the headline.

    I’d avoid most free PR distribution sites simply because most of them apparently base their editorial services on sheer ignorance.

  • I’m having trouble getting my asbestos websites news approved by some of the press release sites.
    Its just that i don’t think we have anything newsworthy to talk about.

    What do you guys think should another medium of SEO would be more appropriate?

  • PRFree.Org says:

    You can submit press release absolutely free. Visit http://www.prfree.org/ now to submit your
    press release free of cost.

  • Your blog is so meaningful and teaches us many things. I was not knowing about the press release sites but now with the help of your blog i come to know about its importance. Thank you so much Marc Harty !

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