I have been submitting press releases to PRWeb at work and it’s been going well. Most of the time I submit on the $200 level. I haven’t experimented going above that price point yet. On the $120 level you can’t see the search engine terms that were searched on to find your news item. You get less distribution. Plus you can’t schedule a free podcast about your news release.

Here are the number of reads so far. As you can see, it seems to generate MUCH MORE press at the higher level of distribution. I’m sure there are other factors (day released, the newsworthiness of the release, etc). However, there is a significant difference in traffic.

All of the releases spiked traffic for several days. I have a potentially large success story that I can’t blog about just yet…

Week #1

Now a few days later you can see the long tail of PRWeb press releases. Unlike traditional media that has a short shelf life, the reads, downloads, pickups, and prints continue to grow. PRWeb keeps the press release up forever and people searching the internet or their site continue to find it. You have a permanent URL and it continues to bring traffic to your web site. Businesswire unfortunately doesn’t have a permanent URL and if you click on an old release, like I did today, you will have an error page. I’d rather pay once for traffic over time.

Week #2

Week #3 – Oct 25

Incidentally SEO is also very beneficial. I got one new link from a site with a pagerank of 7 last week. In one week it has become a huge traffic generator (#3 overall). It also generated leads that are increasing each month. If I could add one like this each week or even one every few months I will see a huge impact. Plus it’s FREE (well, my time isn’t free, but you get the idea).

I’m also experimenting with targeted contextual ads in place of Google Adsense for content and starting more email marketing (this isn’t going well so far). I can’t wait to develop that channel to do more lead nuturing and email marketing. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I just needed the company to support my efforts.

6 Responses to “PRWeb Experiment so Far”

1. Elie Ashery Says:
   October 18th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

   Very interesting Janet! I have only used MarketWire and so far I haven’t really received that big a bang for the buck. Keep up the good research.

   Elie

2. Vlad Says:
   October 24th, 2006 at 11:26 am

   Great article Janet. I used the PRWeb in the past but only with $40 submission. I believe the one sale I made was not enough argument for me to continue to use it. I do use EzineArticles quuiet a bit, I wonder if you can share anything about EzineArticles, if you use it of course.

   Now after readin this I will probable give PRWeb another try.

3. newspapergrl Says:
   October 24th, 2006 at 11:36 am

   I haven’t been impressed lately with my personal interactions or the company itself but they are very good at what they do. Perhaps being bought out by a larger company is part of that. I respect results though.

   Janet

4. Vlad Says:
   October 24th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

   Thanks,
   I have some improvements with them, unfortunately the sites that do pick up articles are not that ones I would like to have links from.

   I believe PRWeb has better odds to generate a PR 7 link to your site.

   I need to give another try.

5. PRWeb may be better than AdWords? » My Affiliate Journey Says:
   October 24th, 2006 at 11:57 pm

   [...] Janet has posted this outstanding article about her “PRWeb Experiment“. If you have a minute it will be well worth reading. [...]

6. Isobel Says:
   November 6th, 2006 at 9:00 pm

   Hey there Janet,

   was just looking over this site and must say that I am incredibly
   impressed with your stats, I’m sure that even after a month, your
   total reader views would have climbed past the 200,000 mark, wow!

   Just curious, did the extra traffic convert well into sales for you?, and were you able to retain them as subscribers? That’s a serious newsletter boost.

   I came across your site because I was doing some research on PRWeb.com, considering if it might be an effective form of advertising and I must say, your results are pretty encouraging.

   Great stuff. I’ll be watching this space.

   Izzie.

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