

Ask HN - Are press releases worth the price? - vijayr

I was looking at the cost of distributing press releases
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/submit-a-press-release/<p>Why are they so expensive? I mean, all they do is forward your press release to a bunch of publications, and some analytics? They charge 350$ <i>per</i> press release??
What am I missing?
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jtoeman
It's an outdated business model fundamentally designed around publicly traded
companies. For them, issuing releases on "the wire" is a requirement as a
means of distributing news.

For a startup, I cannot recommend enough _against_ a wire issuance, unless you
are specifically in the financial community (or some other specific niche that
I'm not thinking of). You can still "issue" a press release simply by putting
it on your blog, emailing it to the press, etc. When I was running my
marketing firm (www.stagetwo.com), we probably issued 100+ releases, with less
than 5 hitting a wire service.

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ryanriddle
Establishing a relationship with a reporter is far better than writing a press
release. Dmitry Dragilev, formally of ZURB, wrote an excellent article on how
startups (and larger businesses) can do this:
<http://mashable.com/2012/02/27/how-to-pitch-media/>

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staunch
They're almost purely vestigial at this point. They _may_ have some small SEO
value, but that's about it.

Press releases are a vanity. Something for PR firms to charge clients for.
Totally useless for small companies.

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livestyle
Fiverr.com is your friend ;)

~~~
supersaiyan
if you're looking to get blacklisted

