A typical Press Release at PRWeb will set you back about $169 if you leave out all the fancy SEO features. Which are really a member of the PRWeb team picking your categories & tags for you, except the SEO Anchor text links which I’ll go into later on. I always go for the more expensive $249 option for that option alone.

Here’s my top 11 tips for a successful Press Release on PRWeb:

Choose the Right Time

Submitting your Press Release at 5pm on a Friday night isn’t going to get you as much exposure as submitting it on Monday Morning. Think about Timezones too, who is your target market. For example if I’m sending a Press Release for the Australian & US Market I’ll typically send it on Tuesday so the US Market gets it on Monday Morning.

Optimise the Headline

Having a boring headline will do nothing for your exposure & clickthroughs. This is where good copywriting comes into play. If you run an Adwords Campaign you’ll have a good idea of what kind of headlines work well in your industry. If not then I recommend Glyphius, this is a piece of software that algorithmically scores ad copy based on past trends then spits out a score. The higher the score, the more appealing your Headline is. I’ve had great success with this.

Don’t claim to “be the best” if you can’t back it up

At lot of Copywriters will try to make statements like “We’re the leading company” or “We’re the best.” Don’t make statements like this unless you can reason Why you’re the best, use the opporunity to really sell the website or company here.

Don’t use Conatives like We, You, I or They

Using Cognatives not only makes the release sound less professional but it takes away Keyword ranking potential. For example:

Giving away a Free Pen that they can use

should turn into

Giving away a Free Pen that professional writers can use

Give an overview of why your site is unique

A Press Release is the perfect opportunity for you to sell your website, if your site offers something unique that others don’t then play on this in the Press Release. This will give journalists & bloggers something to write about & potentially attract much more attention than normal.

Use Quotations

PRWeb has a nice Quotation feature that will take a paragraph from your Press Release & Emphasise it. Use your most compelling message in this space & really make it work for you.

Add a Picture or Media Files

You’re allowed up to 3MB of Pictures & other media files. Pictures will also display beside your Press Release in the natural listings. Again, use this opportunity to add some media & get your money’s worth.

Include Anchor Text links in the Press Release to Deep Pages

A Press Release is one of the best ways to get a brand new website indexed in the search engines & also give it some authority. Since Google trusts new websites less, sending out a press release will instantly give you site some Credibility (and some links). For example I recently just sent out a Press Release for one of our new Bike Trading websites & used these three keywords:

1. Bikes for Sale
2. Bike Accessories
3. Cheap Bikes

Surely enough we’re already starting to rank for these terms within a week of Soft Launching the website. So use those Anchor test links to your advantage. I see too many press releases that just include the url of the website (i.e. www.earnersblog.com). This will achieve nothing. This option is only available in the $249 option on PRWeb.

Select all your Categories & Tags

You have the ability to select a certain number of Categories & Tags. Choose the Maximum possible. If you run out of ones within your industry then choose the most popular Categories. Choose tags that appear on the main page, these get the most amount of exposure.

Include the right Contact Details

If you have an inhouse SEO or even a Media Company sending your Press Releases quite often the sign up users details will get added to the Press Release. This obviously isn’t good when you’ve got potential clients contacting you. Make sure you have the right details in that space.

Socially Bookmark the Press Release

Once the Press Releases is live, start bookmarking it & sharing it. If it’s of value then more people will see it, that means more people will see your company or website. Don’t just let the Press Release do its thing, give it a nice push in the right direction.

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Matt Coddington recently sold his blog & I must admit the new author has started well out by writing an interesting article on ecommerce & how to get started in it. Since Matt doesn’t normally write overly large articles you can notice in the comments that some readers found it a bit lengthy (I quite enjoyed the article despite my short attention span).

I’m a big believer in trying to get my point across as quickly as possible, so as not to:

1. Take up too much of YOUR time (remember you’re supposed to be earning & building sites….right?)
2. Not let you get bored with the post
3. Maybe tease you with some information so you’ll come back again
4. I know I don’t need to spell everything out step by step, you’re smart people
5. Take up hours of my own time

But that’s just my blog, this is how I’ve written posts from the very beginning, the same can’t be said for others out there.

This brings me nicely to my next point. In a niche (such as SEO) with so many blogs, so much information yet so little time to really take it all in, it IS natural for most of the readers to skim through articles & pick out the information that is relevant to them rather than read the bulk of articles from head to toe.

I know I certainly fall into this category, I even mention it on my about page:

I read so much information everyday, I think I’ve got a severe case of ADD. I find it really hard to concentrate on so many blogs & articles & bits of news.

Netvibes has recently helped me save a huge amount of reading time by keeping all of my regular stops in an easy to manage interface & is definitely worth a look.

So in the true nature of what I’ve just been discussing let’s finish this snippet here & tomorrow we’ll talk about what’s better on sales letters for affiliate marketing, long or short copy?

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I found an awesome WordPress plugin after leaving a comment at Community Spark which allows you to send a customised email message to all new commenters on your blog. Immediately my eyes lit up as I thought aboutthe possibilities.

This allows you to do a number of things which ultimately make the experience for new users to your blog very very welcoming & personal.

It also has a large number of practical applications that allow you to convert visitors to feed subscribers or paying customers:

1. Greet them with a personal message & thank them for posting on your blog
2. Point them in the Direction of your RSS Feed
3. Recommend your favourite products & services
4. Ask them to sign up to your real mailing list
5. Direct them to some of your best post

The plugin is called Comment Relish & can be used on ANY type of blog to make money.

Lets look at a random real life example:

Say you run a web hosting blog like the guys over at the Hostican Blog. They could for example include a special discount offer to sign up to Hostican whenever someone comments on the blog. Or include something like “The top ten reasons you should switch to Hostican.” This could be said for any webhost or blog that has a product or service. Imagine physically sending a sales letter to everyone that comments on your blog. This could double your sales.

You could also sell advertising space in the email at a monthly rate.

The possibilities are endless as to how you use it (i’m sure some of you will come up with ingenious ideas), just remember that you’ve now added another potential source of revenue to your arsenal.

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I can personally say that I used to fall into this category, but over the years I’ve learnt that the only way to get what you want is to ask for it & pursue it.

Too many people will analyse what everyone else does instead of taking a stand & really getting your hands dirty. Especially with “making money online.” 99% of people would rather see what everyone else is doing than to come up with an original idea & test it out. Because that would be too much effort?

Getting into this frame of mind, whilst it’s non evasive is not doing you or your websites any good. You will be losing out on:

1. Exposure
2. Links
3. Friends
4. Revenue
5. Joint Ventures
6. Advertisers
7. Feed Readers
8. Email List Subscribers
9. Conversions
10. Traffic

It’s time for a wakeup call….
For example:

Jess writes an article, it’s the best article in the world. She puts it up on her blog (that no-one reads) & waits, hopes even prays for lots of people to come & read it, link to it & comment on her blog (she’s really excited). Then a week later Jess sits by the computer, hands in her head wondering why no-one has read her article or even dropped her a comment.

Bob on the other hand, writes a similar article. It’s not quite the best article in the world but it’s linkable & has original content. Once the article is finished Bob makes a shortlist of 50 blogs that might relate to the article. In turn he hand emails each blogger one by one using the following email:

Hi Blogger, my name is Bob & I run a fairly new blog on Bobs Things. I’ve been reading your blog for a while now & it has given me a lot of inspriation to share my knowledge & contribute in different ways.

I’ve written an article on Bobbing which addresses a number of themes that you discuss on your blog & I was wondering if I could possibly get some feedback or even a mention on your blog. In return, if I ever get a good audience I will make sure to return the favour

Kind Regards

Bob

What bob has achieved here has maybe taken an extra 20 minutes of his time. But in doing so he has potentially grown his blog readerbase by 50 people. Thousands more could follow if the article gets published on more blogs.

Don’t be afraid to ask for things. If you don’t ask you don’t get.

This can be applied across a number of different verticals:

Link Exchanges

Do not be afraid to ask sites that are relevant to yours for a link. If they value your website & think the content is linkable then they’ll do it. If you have a rubbish site that is clearly MFA or recycled content then don’t expect a link.

Affiliate Offers

If you’re promoting affiliate offers with reviews then ask for the business at the end of the review. Don’t expect the user to just click the link.

Thanks for reading my review of blah, if you enjoyed the review & want to purchase or find out more about the product please click here.

Affiliate Managers

If you’re running CPA campaigns & pulling more than 20+ leads per day consistently than you should really be asking your affiliate managers to do more for you & increase your CPA. They’ll usually be more than happy to bend over backwards for affiliates pushing “consistent numbers.”

Feed Subscribers

Ask people to subscribe to your feed, don’t just expect them to click the feed button & add you to their feed reader. Have a call to action at the bottom of each post:

Enjoy this post? Then subscribe to my feed for future updates!

Email List Subscribers

Again, if your plan is to get people to subscribe to your email list don’t just plop the box up there & expect people to put in their details. Either ask them to or make a call to action that will make them do it (i.e. giving something free away). Aweber allows you to have autoresponders that will email the free gift to the subscriber straight away.

Social Networking

If you want your readers to digg a story, just don’t plonk the button at the bottom of the post, encourage them to digg it. 15-20 initial Diggs can really get an article moving quickly.

Development Staff & Designers

Don’t expect them to churn out superb work off their own bat. Have goals & objectives for each site that you want them to work towards. Tell them when someting isn’t working the way you want it, get their opinions & work together.

Conclusion

Be proactive with your blog or your website, don’t sit there & analyse everyone else then expect your blog to do really well. It takes hard work, patience & the ability to take a few knockbacks here & there. But it’ll be worth it.

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Pro Blogger: This is someone who blogs full time, in fact they eat sleep & probably dream blogs too. This takes extreme dedication aswell as a good Feed Reader :p

After Work Blogger: This type of blogger still has a full time job, they blog sometimes from work *cough* or blog when they get home. They don’t tend to take things as seriously as the Pro Blogger. There could be a small percentage of this type of blogger that Borders on Pro Blogging, perhaps wanting to take things to the next level & quit work altogether.

Blind Blogger: Eyes on the prize, all this type of blogger can think about is cold hard cash. The problem tends to be that in the confusion most of their posts tend to be useless, recycled or even copied. There is a small minority of this type of blogger that does reach their goal, however it usually takes a while before they realize that in order to make the big bucks you need to blog about more commercial things like Gadgets or Celebrities.

Corporate Blogger: Yes, even companies pay people to blog. In fact my company has a Corporate Blogger who generates a huge amount of hype for us. This type of blogger is very focused on creating viral content that will spread & help bring brand awareness & new business to the company. They are generally very switched on & have a good marketing or blogging background.

Spam Blogger: Splogs or Spam Blogs are a very real threat to Blogging in general. I reckon I get about 5 trackbacks per day of people scraping my posts & about 15 unwanted spam comments per day. Spam Bloggers use auto content generators to pull stories from other Blog’s RSS Feeds, the key for them is mass generation in the hope that more pages online equals more money.

Hobby Blogger: This type of blogging usually occurs from people passionate about something, like sport. I’ve seen blogs of this type start out small then become huge. In fact I think that this type of blog normally does very well, why? because the blogger is posting because they are passionate about a particular topic, they’re not posting to get money nor are they posting for recognition (well maybe sometimes :p)

Review Blogger: This type of blogger most reviews products or gadgets & includes detailed photos or guides. Normally this happens on Gadgets blogs but more & more frequently we’re seeing people review Ecommerce Products, Ebooks or Software. Blogs can be great for an unbiased opinion towards a product or service but generally whenever you see an affiliate link promoting the software or service they’re probably talking it up

Comment Blogger: Instead of Blogging this these guys prefer comments on other blogs & interacting on a social level with other bloggers & commenter’s. Eventually most of them end up starting their own blog, advantages of this is that you’ve already made others aware of who you are, so when you finally get a blog started you have a network to promote it.

Political Blogger: These Bloggers love a bit of controversy & also love stirring up trouble. Not afraid to post their opinions online, usually stand by their guns & will defend their point to the death. Beware.

Journal Blogger: The original type of Blogger that uses blogs to talk about their day to day life. This type is very fanatical, they will take pictures everywhere they go, perhaps videos & post them on their blog. General women bloggers of this sort seem to do much better than males, I wonder why

What type are you? I definately fall into the “After Work Blogger” category. I don’t trust blogging & online revenue streams enough to not have a day job as well. Call me paranoid :p

In a later post I’ll look as what factors drive people to blogging & why so many people are now doing it.

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