Day 9 – Friday

I did the 3 postings to niche-related blogs that I missed yesterday and then another 3 for today. This took me 3 hours. Much of this time was actually setting myself so I could post to AOL AIMpages blogs and have my blog linked to my comments and show up in my profile.

Following suggestions I got from the ConquerYourNiche forum, I also submitted my article from yesterday to GoArticles, Article City and Article Sender. That took another hour. I wish I had known that I could have skipped submitting it to GoArticles, because Article Sender will submit your article to GoArticles as well if you add your account information. Also, it's not clear to me that Article City is actually a live site – from poking around I couldn't find anything newer than last December.

Day 9 consists of a very short lesson on how to write an online or print press release. While earlier writing assignments have walked us through the task step by step, this one barely gives enough detail to give a general idea of what to do. We are then supposed to submit our press release via PRWeb, which is reported to have both free and paid options. Unfortunately, PRWeb quit doing free press releases on October 23, 2006 – almost 9 months ago. This is another example of the program not keeping up to date. It wouldn't bother me if this was a printed document, but part of the point of web publishing for this type of program is to allow easy updates. Additionally, the press release formula that the Challenge recommends for online press releases calls for writing a letter of introduction, the press release itself, and a pre-written article for the reporters who receive the article. I used Google to find several free press release services, and none of them accept letters of introduction or pre-written articles. We aren't allowed to use such articles at BellaOnline.com, and I have a hard time believing that other web journalists are either. (Of course, if you are a small enough press, content is content as long as it is decent.) At any rate, it would have been a waste of my time if I'd written the article and letter, because I had no use for it. I actually ended up getting my information on how to write a press release from a very good article at PRLog – So, frankly, today's information was pretty much useless beyond the idea of sending out a press release. Not that I ever would have thought of sending out a press release to publicize my blog. Oh, ironically, after my rant yesterday about not attributing quotes, today's quote, from Rodney Dangerfield, is attributed. Ironic that Rodney Dangerfield gets respect but not the likes of Sylvia Plath.

For those who are interested, you can see my press release on PRLog at
New Blog Makes Dog Body Language Simple and Understandable. I also posted it to 1888 Press Release and iNewswire.com. I tried to post to www.free-press-release.com, but it wouldn't accept my form submission after several tries. I sent them a bug fix, so we'll see what happens. From my viewpoint, I like PRLog the best, but that's based on what I see, not anything related to results, which I don't expect to see for at least a few day. For that matter, unless a reporter contacts me, I don't really have any way to know which PR service, if any, I am getting traffic from. I'd have to have separate sites (or a site I control more than Blogger so that I can use URL redirection to track hits.)

I spent about 8 hours total working on this today. I got no ad income. Since two of the places I posted about my site today were on mylot, a pay to post site, I should get a few cents from that.