How to Use Press Releases to Market Your Affiliate Sites
You may think that press releases are only issued by 'big' or 'real world' companies, and aren't for smaller online or affiliate marketing sites and businesses.
If so, you'll be surprised to learn that most successful businesses, online and off, use press releases to promote and market themselves.
I was surprised myself to learn that my friend and colleague Lee Romanov, the President of InsuranceHotline.com, uses press releases extensively to promote her online business.
Lee is essentially an affiliate marketer who provides comparitive insurance rate quotes to residents of Canada and the States, for fire, home, life, travel, health, commercial, motorcycle, pet, mortgage and car insurance.
80% of people who visit InsuranceHotline.com instantly find savings of
$600 to $1,200 off their insurance cost and save hundreds and in many cases
thousands of dollars per year.
To access a free quote, visitors fill out a step-by-step questionnaire that assesses their insurance needs. For example, to get a quote on car insurance you must provide information about your location, age, gender, cars you will be driving, etc.
At the bottom of each questionnaire, Lee includes a survey question, The question changes on a weekly basis.
Because InsuranceHotline.com is a high-traffic site, the answers to those survey questions give her a sufficiently broad response to generate a regular press release that discusses the public's view on a particular topic, usually related to car insurance.
Lee also spends alot of time interpolating the latest news and how that will affect rates in the insurance industry. She'll then put her own take on the developments and issue a release that ultimately points back to her site.
Here's sample press release from Insurance Hotline:
Fear Factor: Reporting An Accident To Your Insurance Company
TORONTO, April 5 /CNW/ - The OPP reported 964 accidents this weekend.
While $1,000 is the minimum for mandatory reporting to collision centres, insurance companies want to know about all accidents, regardless of the amount.
Rates are based on risk, not "cost of repair."
Example: A driver with a clean record pays $1,855. After an accident, their rate could increase to $7,242. If they switched companies, they'd find one charging only $3,204.
Drivers paralyzed with fear of their insurance rate skyrocketing should use www.InsuranceHotline.com to find the lowest rate available if reporting an accident.
Rate example details; click below:
http://www.insurancehotline.com/ratecomparison2.html
For further information: Lee Romanov, president, InsuranceHotline.com
So, can affiliate marketers use press releases to promote their sites?
Sure, why not?
For example, if I was really on the ball with my online dating service review site, I would poll the 150,000+ subscribers on my Singles eScene list with regularity.
I could ask 'What type of relationship are you looking for?' and give options such as 'serious long-term', 'just friends', 'one night stand', etc. To narrow the results, I would also ask for age, country of residence and gender information.
Extrapolating the results, I'd then write a press release along the lines of "A survey of more than 5000 single men aged 25 to 45 showed that 83 percent who use online dating services are looking for a serious, long-term relationship."
I'd also include statistics from Jupiter Research about the huge numbers of singles using online dating services, and perhaps contact one of the affiliate managers that I work with for a quote related to my story.
Getting a quote from one of those polled about his experience with online dating services would be even better.
Regardless of whether the story was picked up by offline journalists, the story would be posted to all the major online newswires, where it would remain, linking nicely back to my site.
Using press releases to promote your site may take a little time; but free traffic, quality backlinks and increased PR would certainly make it worth the effort!
Author's Resource: Article by Rosalind Gardner,
author of the best-selling "Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online". To learn how you too can succeed in Internet and affiliate marketing, please visit
http://NetProfitsToday.com
(To use this article on your website please review Reprint Guidelines.)
© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All
Rights Reserved.
Related Information
Submitting Press Releases Made Easier
Submitting your press release to all the press distribution services can be time-consuming and costly if you posted to each service individually.
However, Jeff Alderson, developer of AdWord Analyzer has done it again with his latest software, PressEqualizer.
Even if you've never written a press release before, Press Equalizer will make that seemingly daunting task easier, as Jeff includes a number of different examples to suit your needs.
 I'd recommend spending some time reading press releases at PRWeb.com or other newswire service to get the 'gist' of how good press releases are written.
Ultimately, your goal should be to attract media attention with your release and receive even MORE traffic than from all those links you'll get with PE.
Although $97 may seem a little steep for yet another piece of software, it is a one-time investment for software that you will end up using regularly.
What others have said about Press Equalizer:
I've been wanting something like this for a long time!
We all know that press releases are a backdoor to get sites indexed and receiving traffic, BUT submitting sites manually is too time consuming - until NOW.
It's a breeze to use Press Equalizer and I can submit multiple sites to various press release sites quickly and easily.
My sites get back links from those high PR sites instantly, which help my sites ranking. Not to mention that I get additional traffic from those press releases.
It's an excellent piece of software!
William Shi
In terms of getting traffic to your sites, increasing backlinks and Google PR; I give PressEqualizer a 5/5 'Cool Tool' rating.
Article Announcer
If you are interested in using press releases to market your site and its content, you'll also find Jason Potash's "Article Announcer" software very useful to get your articles placed on dozens, even hundreds, of sites; creating fabulous backlinks, increased PR and free traffic to your sites.
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