Have you ever consider to offer a podcats in your PRWeb press release? There were about 1,000,000 podcast downloads since the PRWeb Podcast services went live last December. According to a press release this service is available at any distribution levels:

Since moving to a paid platform in December, the PRWebPodcast â„¢ service is now available to customers with press releases at any distribution level. PRWeb users can now choose to discuss their news in a 5-minute podcast interview or a more in-depth 10- to 20-minute interview. PRWeb Podcast episodes are available in three audio formats, including MP3, OGG, and the iPod and iTunes friendly M4a format.

Tags: PRWeb

Recently, thanks to Ponn’s offer, I had a chance to participate in webinar by Mario Bonilla of PRWeb. I strongly recommend to sign up and participate in one of his webinars even if you already have been using PRWeb. Don’t forget Ponn’s offer while you doing so, her offer is extended to every one- new PRWeb users as well as current PRWeb customers.

If you never used PRWeb in the past, Mario webinars will walk you through the basics of using the PRWeb interface as well as help you to understand the differences in the levels of press releases. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts I have utilized PRWeb in the past, during the time when PRWeb still had a $40 level of press release as well as a free one. Neither of these levels is offered currently and the lowest available press release comes at $80.

Since I am preparing a $200 press release for one of my affiliate websites I would like to share with you some of the 44 cool features available with this level. While I plan to take advantage of all the features, I am going to share here the ones that I see to be most important.

• Industry Targets. If you ever were to visit PRWeb you would notice that each pres release is placed within a particular industry. With $200 level press release you will have an opportunity to place your press release within ten different industries. So if you provide SEO services to your clients but have extensive experience optimizing Real Estate or Financial websites, you should consider the possibility of including your press release in those industries as well.
• Hyperlink Anchor Tags. Instead of using the URL of your website, with $200 press release you are allowed to embed the keywords in the links to your website. This feature will help you to boost the relevancy in search results on the search engines.
• Google Sitemap Placement. PRWeb will include your press release into their Google Sitemap. While your press release will appear on the front page of PRWeb and considering the fact that the site enjoys PR 7 (and probably very frequent spidering by search engines), this option is just a topping on the cake, to ensure your press release is spidered and indexed in a timely manner.
• URL Keywords. With $200 press release you will be able to submit up to two keywords to be included in the URL of your press release.
• Trackbacks Feature. This feature allows you to activate trackbacks to any webiste able to send pingbacks when referencing your press release. This feature can also work as an incentive for bloggers to write about your press release and in turn to get a trackback from PRWeb to their own blog.
• Pheedo Distribution Network. Your press release will be picked up by Phedoo, which in turn can translate in additional highly targeted traffic.
• Yahoo News Inclusion. If your press release receives editorial score of 4, your press release will be available on Yahoo News as a hosted copy and also will be available for inclusion in their search results.
• Google News. The same is true about Google News. Your release will be available for inclusion in their news section providing that you achieve editorial score of 4. (Just a note about editorial score. If your score is 3 and below, your press release is queued and does not go live until you made the recommended changes. I have only used PRWeb once in the past, and it was not that difficult to achieve editorial score of 4. Considering the fact that English is not my native language).

Again these are only few great things about PRWeb and if you have not tried it for your business I highly recommend to give them a try. Again with Ponn’s offer, you will get $200 towards your press release. All you need to do is to participate in one of Mario Bonalla’s webianrs, which I personally found to be extremely informative.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, PRWeb

Ok, let me get straight to the point. Ponn over at Empower Women Now, has negotialted a deal that you can not afford to ignore. Get $200 towards your next press release for participating in a free Webinar.

There is absolutely nothing to lose: Get Your PRWeb $200 here.

You still can participate even if you already have a PRWeb account. Details on Ponn’s blog.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, PRWeb

A while back, thanks to Andy Beard and David Olsen I was introduced to PRWeb Trackbacks and have tried to explore this feature both as a blogger and as an author of press releases. While I initially thought of this technique as a possible loophole where you acquire an inbound link from PRWeb (PR 7), I am convinced now that it is not a loophole but indeed a great SEO/SEM strategy.

Before you read the rest of this post I highly recommend to read David’s post which will help you to understand the technique. David explains that if you reference some press releases you may be able to get a trackback from PRWeb to your post. David says that this technique is often overlooked by blogger, I may add that this feature is often overlooked by the authors of press releases as well. These trackbacks do not have “nofollow” attributes and therefore can help your blog’s PR in a long term, but also, if you are an author of a press release, you can benefit from these trackbacks.

In my quest I have tried to reference press releases that were relevant to the content of my blog. The results varied from getting a trackback right away, to never receiving trackback. Sometimes I would receive a trackback after few days/weeks after referencing a press release on my blog. Needless to say I found no particular pattern which made me think it was not loophole and I needed to put on the shoes of an author of press release to explore the issue further.

PRWeb Tarckbacks: Automatic Or With Your Approval

When purchasing a press release at PRWeb at $120 you get an option where your release will give trackbacks to blogs and websites that are able of sending pingbacks and trackbacks. This option can be implemented automatically and the trackback appears as soon as your pres release receives ping from website or blog on which your press release was mentioned. You can also set to approve manually these trackbacks- a feature, in my opinion, to prevent “splogs” to benefit from these trackbacks. Having said this I wonder if PRWeb cares about “splogs” and “spammers” exploring this avenue on the press releases where trackback is given automatically? In any event if you have set the trackbacks to be approved manually, do not forget about your press release and visit your PRWeb account frequently at least first few days since your release goes live. Here is why. When your press release goes live the initial PR is 0 even though the PRWeb domain ranks at 7, and while your press releas will benefit down from PRWeb domain’s page rank, if there are other links poiting to your website or press release is even better. There are different ways that a blogger can attempt to get that trackback, but generally you will find out that a post will contain at least a link to your website and maybe even both, a link to your website and to the URL of the press release. In either case you get benefit of an incoming link so approving the trackback is a way of saying thank you to those webmasters and bloggers. Chances are that once a blogger gets the trackback from your press release he or she will keep an eye on your company’s future press releases and may feature another article or review of your company again in the future. Also you can keep track of the bloggers who wrote about your press release and contact them in the future to see if they will be willing to generate some extra “buzz” about your company.

Advise to Bloggers

I personally found this feature to be of great value. PRWeb is a great resource for news, and you can probably find news relative to your blog no matter what is your niche. If you use WordPress like I do, all you need to do is to fill in the trackback URL provided by PRWeb. This URL can be found in the bottom of a press release (if you can’t find it most likely the press release was purchased at less than $120). But if it is all that you do, and your post or article contains no link to either advertiser’s website or to the press release itself, chances are your trackback will not be approved by the author of a press release. I personally cover all angles and when referencing a particular press release I link to both the press release and advertiser’s website as well as sending a trackback by the provided option in your WordPress. If you do so and see no trackback few days past, e-mail the author or person resposible for the press release pointing out that you were generous with your links and hope that they will approve the trackback. I had a chance to explain to few advertisers and press release authors how the PRWeb trackback works and how each party can benefit from it, and they all agreed that it is indeed a great feature. Now the problem is that some many advertisers after publishing their press releases releases do not pay attention to this feature and visit their PRWeb account only to check on statistics when it comes to “reads”, “pickups” and “prints”.

Again, I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate Andy’s and David’s advise in this respect. I also hope this article sheds more light on the benefit behind PRWeb trackbacks for both bloggers and advertisers alike.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, PRWeb

My desire to write about PRWeb and how can it be used in affiliate marketing is based on the fact that many affiliates, myself included, often underestimate the benefits of promoting their website through PRWeb press releases. The reason for that is that with PRWeb you need to put out money upfront. Many of use utilize PPC advertising promoting the products of our merchants, but with PPC advertising you have an option to star slow. There were many times that I have set the daily limit for my PPC campaigns to as low as $10 per day. I would gradually increase the spending if campaign proved to be successful and if it was not I was at peace with myself for not overspending on something that id not work. With PRWeb you do not have that luxury and you do have to put out certain amount of money upfront. When I used the PRWeb, I had to suspend one of the PPC campaigns for several days in order to budget for press release. The ROI was well worthed.

It has been few months since I last used PRWeb, still during the time when there was still a free level and a minimum paid press release was at $40. But I have promised myself to get back on track with PRWeb, so this post will serve me as a reminder. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the free press releases are no longer available and the minimum paid level comes at $80. Next level, in which I personally am very interested in, comes at $120 and offers one option which you can use to leverage your press releases exposure in the blogosphere and on the websites capable of sending what is know as TrackBacks and PingBancks. This option gives you and ability to trackback either automatically or with your approval, an option often overlooked by the authors of press releases. I will dedicate an entire article once again to PRWeb Trackbacks so I can give the due credit to my fellow bloggers who have alerted me to this feature. I am grateful to them because they help me to understand the benefit of these trackbacks not only as a blogger but as an advertiser and author of press releases.

Benefits of PRWeb Press Releases

To explain benefits of PRWeb press releases I will use my last press release (at $40) and its statistics, which again is no longer available at PRWeb. Bellow is a snapshot from the statistics and I will try to brake down these numbers for you while ignoring the statistics with the value of 0:

• 59,544 – this number represents what PRWeb calls “reads”. Basically this is the number that tells you how many times your press release was accessed from PRWeb website and other distribution points where PRWeb has the ability to measure traffic. This number does not include the number of journalists who have received your release through email. In addition there are online distribution points that PRWeb has no ability to track. This number does include RSS measurements.
• 824- this numer represents what PRWeb calls “estimated pickups”. This is the number of times your press release was accessed by a consumer/media person. This number simply attempts to tell you an estimate interest in your release. It does not represents how many times your press release appeared on other websites or blogs. The press release we are concerned with appeared no more than 20 times (this number is my own estimation based on incoming links I was able to track) on other websites or blogs.
• 3- finally this number represents the number of time some one accessed the “printer friendly version”. PRWeb calls this number “prints”. In reality there may have been more prints because only small percentage of Internet users actually access the printer friendly version before printing the press release.

Traffic Benefits

Unlike PPC advertising that will continue to bring traffic to your website as long as you continue to run your campaigns, PRWeb brings a wave of traffic while your press release is fresh. This traffic decreases as time passes by. Nevertheless due to the fact that your press release is distributed via channels/industries, this wave of traffic is highly targeted and can result in some very good ROI. At $40 my last press release resulted in sales and eventually in realized $260 of commissions. I could have been much higher if I took more time on preparing the press release.

SEO Benefits

With PPC advertising you do not get any SEO benefits. With PRWeb you do. Not only PRWeb domain enjoys PR 7, your press release is likely to be picked up by few other websites with relatively high page rank and you may continue to benefit from that fact for months and even years, depending if and how your press release is archived on those websites.

While the title of this article may seemed to project an opinion that PRWeb is better that PPC advertising. It was not my intention because I use both extensively. But as with any business in affiliate marketing it is not good idea to place all the “eggs into one nest”, and there were few times last year that Google helped us to understand this truth. If PPC is working well for you, you should continue to make of it as much as you can, but don’t overlook other avenues of promoting your wbesites.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, PRWeb