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.
Thanks!
I think that in the beginning, the Internet was going to be new, new business models, new ways of doing business. But in reality it is really a new tool, a new communication method, and old world business practices still apply. Integration of the offline and online worlds will really yield the best success for affiliates.
Thanks for the compliment on our datafeeds. We try to provide our affiliates with the tools they need to be successful. We just launched coupon feeds as well. Thanks for letting me join in 🙂
Jamie,
I am glad you are following this. I jsut sent you an e-mail.
I wish more merchants would join your site, maybe I can do something about it 😉 even on a small scale.
I would have to agree with Vlad, that it is always good idea to submit a press release, but I would say that you should be running a newsworthy business, and you if you have the money, preferably $200, would be best for PRWeb, then do it for sure. If not, start off with PPC, and try that first.