Good comments, to which I agree. I did know that my $1000 story was at best, a borderline story to send a press release about, but I really wanted to do a release on PublisherForums while I’m still running the contest, to take advantage of it.

A better story would have been to mention how I brokered a domain for a broker’s share of $23,000, but since there is an NDA, it really takes out all the juicy bits out of the story such as the domain sale price and, of course, the domain!

Thanks for posting the detailed information about the paid press release. Far to many people in this business either don’t try things or else try them and fail to share, even when not all that happy with the results.

You might like this recent post on Brendon Sinclair’s blog and my comments. Getting national or international exposure isn’t always easy but from a local level (which typically gets picked up nationally if there’s an interesting story) it’s not really that hard to get press coverage.

http://www.tailored.com.au/2007/03/how-to-get-100000-people-to-read-about.htm

Especially for the benefit of others reading just remember two things:

Reporters are typically under the gun to produce, produce, produce. being a reporter is like having 6 blogs, there’s a post due _all_ the time. So if you can offer them something you stand a great chance of getting in print or in front of the camera.

The “but” to the paragraph above is, a “story” is not that you opened a website business or redesigned your site. A story is “even though it’s banned, online poker buys local 23 year old a class condo”. Or “Six-figure Internet mogul calls Namio home, wouldn’t chose anywhere else.” A printable story is about local people doing something different.

Buying them lunch has a way of working also … and $169 will buy quite a few business lunches … or one half of John Chow’s lunch LoL.