The Online Press Release

A Case Study: Costs and Results

By George McKenzie
Former TV News Anchor and Radio Talk Show Host

We've all heard that "free advice is worth what you pay for it..."
 
Shakespeare put it a little more eloquently in King Lear, when the aging monarch admonished his daughter Cordelia, "Nothing shall come of nothing..."
 
And when it comes to free press release distribution, I now know from first hand personal experience that "you get what you pay for."
 
But the good news is, you don't have to pay much. In fact, compared to the return you get, your cash outlay is extremely well spent.
 
Here's what I'm talking about. 

Last March I did some free press release distribution through PRWeb.com
 
Now, PRWeb tracks results. You can find statistics on how many people actually accessed your press release, opened the link, printed it out, forwarded it to someone else, etc.
 
I was pleased with numbers. The link to the release was opened 4780 times.
 
Pretty good, huh?
 
But wait!...as they like to say in all those infomercials you watch when you have insomnia. 

I submitted a similar release Tuesday morning, August 23rd. I paid $80 for it.
 
By Sunday morning, August 28, the release had been "accessed"  44,783 times.

Plus, when you searched for the word "publicity" on Yahoo News, links to my press release ranked number two *and* number three.

In other words, for 80 bucks I got a chance to tell more than 45,000 people about the my website.

Plus, think about all the one way, incoming links I got that will help raise my search engine ranking.

Not a bad return on my investment, wouldn't you say?

All things considered, it's a whole lot of bang for 80 bucks.

But there's another proverb that you've undoubtedly heard, and it applies to online press release distribution.

"To make money, you have to spend money."

As much as I hate to admit it, I guess it's true sometimes.

But here's the good news.

When it comes to reaping the free publicity an online press release can bring...

A little money goes a long, long way. And you get a lot more than you pay for.