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

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.

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

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

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

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