The Web Development company I work for, recently started offering our customers press releases. We dont actually do the pres releases ourselves, instead we use different companies to do them for us. What we noticed was that when you hire a company such ad Prweb or Businesswire you are paying a lot more money than the price you are originally quoted. They start adding fees if you want what they call the extras.

I have gone onto other forums that have said you get what you paid ofr and so on... but I believe that not to be true in this ever changing technologically based world. A good example is I posted over 5 press releases with different Press Release services.

One with www.Prweb.com which charged me over $200.00 and it did not even include Associated Press. Two weeks later it only came up on google news. of course I did what any smart business person would do, I compared press release companies, their pricing and their results. Three other well known companies faired at around the same price or more. Each one offering what another one didn't. Yes on some the results were better. Now mind you I absorbed the cost my client would have paid becauise they were my first client who took my offer on press releases. I then went to www.prunderground.com and for $49.00 not only did they write the press release for me but they also included it on Associated Press. I also got about the same results as I got on the other sites.

I understand now why it did not show up everywhere. after doing further research I gues it depends on the importance of the press release. So you see after spending over $200.00 average to send a press release. I got the same result from Prunderground for $49.00 as I did for the more expensive sites. So I ask do you really get what you paid for?

Thank you for your comment. I've often wondered about the real value of PRWeb and how they compare to other services. There's a lot that goes into the success of a press release including the link and search engine value. Thank you.

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Given the importance of inbound links you would think a "SEO" package would include distribution to the AP (Only included in the $360 package...).

I have heard things about PR.com too (good things).

I'll agree with you though... You don't always get what you pay for.

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i've heard many beneficial reasons for using press releases in general, but little on PR reviews or services that provide the most for what you're paying.

i recently submitted a press release to a number of free pr services & was thinking about using PRWeb but decided to investigate further before paying for service. your post has definitely helped.

plus the added info. on PRunderground was great. I'm considering their gold pr package, the fact you're allowed active links is what i call a deal.

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I have used a bunch of different PR websites. I have noticed some good results from them as well. The first time I ever did a few press releases the rankings on my customers site jumped really good in the search engine rankings. If you are looking to boost your rankings then you really need to pay for them and use links in the press release.

I decided to start a press release site as well, a month ago so I'll see how it goes. If you are interested in posting there feel free. Not sure if I can post the link here so I'll just put the url press-release-articles.com

Good Luck.

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According to me yes some are true but most of site are spam.so before doing any thing please check the states of site wether it is true or spam.Good luck

Had to register to say this... "you get what you pay for" is not always true of press release distribution services, but "you don't get what you don't pay for" is! I have worked for companies that used big PR firms that charge upwards of several thousand dollars a month--those people got results, but do you think that the experts who write press releases that get clients on Oprah or Good Morning America are going to quit their agency jobs and write releases for $49.95?

I'll admit to being no expert (I'm mostly a copywriter, actually) but when I've seen press releases get major media exposure, it's been through the big newswires--PR Newswire and Business Wire, mainly. AP is good to reach people already searching for your topic, but not so much for reaching actual journalists looking for a story.

I guess if you're mostly looking for SEO, the PR Underground package is a good deal. The active embedded links are definitely worth something for SEO value. But I would worry that if they're submitting every press release to Digg and StumbleUpon their accounts are probably already marked as spam, so if your company needs to maintain a good name you might not want to go with a service that's identified as spam on social sites.

If I find myself needing that service in the future, I think I'll go to eReleases for any press release distribution that's intended to get media coverage rather than just being sent out as an SEO press release. I haven't had to send a press release in a few months, but I think PR Web is overpriced for how little they do, and PR Underground is so underpriced that I don't think they're going to have much pull with journalists. eReleases is even more expensive than PR Web but they get you on PR Newswire and for a lot less than going directly through PR Newswire--last I heard they were charging almost $1,000 for a release if you go straight to PR Newswire, but eReleases is $399. PR Web can get you on Business Wire, but it's $467 there, and I think PR Newswire is better for most topics.

Sorry to ramble, it's just that I've worked with some pretty high-falootin' PR types and it kind of grinds my gears when people think $49.95 can get you the kind of results that people with degrees and years of agency experience get! PR skills are still pretty valuable even in a recession market, and you're not going to find top-notch people working for $25/hour (estimating 1 hour to write a release, 1 hour to send it to all those social sites, AP, etc). Of course there's a time and place for everything, so like I said if you're really just going for SEO, the cheapie sites might be best.

hi BlackberryPie

that's a lot of money for a press release distribution. i guess PR Web and Business Wire are the big ones but surely you can get great services from other places that are cheaper. they don't have to be bad just coz they're cheaper.

i know fujitsu, siemens, adidas, 3M etc use a company called PressPort to distribute their press releases and they're not that expensive. check them out here if you like Prices press release distribution

have a nice day

I freely admit I'm no expert but my thinking on it is, if you are going to spend any money at all to distribute a press release, you'd better make sure it will actually reach reporters--and PR Newswire and Businesswire are what they read. Journalists get plenty of unsolicited press releases without going to a bunch of smaller sites to look at releases posted there, and they know that most companies with newsworthy events to announce use big PR firms, and those PR firms use the top newswires. If a smaller business wants to compete for the attention of reporters with top news outlets, they need to get their release in front of the same journalists' eyeballs. I'd rather spend the money and know I'm getting the right thing once, rather than spend less but spend it 5 or 6 times before getting results and end up paying more in the end to actually get any coverage.

Louise, you replied to two threads in this section with the same blurb about that company, do you work for them? Just curious.

nope, don't work for them but heard great things about them. they've apparently existed for 8 years or smth so they must be doing smth right.

small companies? adidas, fujitsu etc aren't small companies in my opinion. anyway, was just a suggestion

have a nice day