There are many reasons to write a press release.  If you’re looking to earn money as a freelance writer, online of offline, you may want to publicize your service; writing your own press release is a good way to do it. Press releases are good from a search engine optimization point of view, and they can also bring you to the attention of the press and potential customers.

One downside of the press release is that they can be expensive to distribute and they require a particular style. Those who have mastered it, charge a premium for their services. Note that when you pay for someone to write a press release for you, that is what you get, a press release, There is usually a separate, and possibly much larger fee for distributing the press release.

And that’s another reason for learning to write a Press Release. Once you have mastered the technique, you’ll find that customers are generally willing to pay more for a press release than, for example, for an article of the same length. And that makes some sense. If you are going to pay PRweb or some similar service $250 get your press release out there, you want to be sure the information you put out is good quality and in the right, very specific format.

Here’s what ezinearticles.com has to say on the subject.

So now you have the bare bones of how to write a press release, let’s look at it in a bit more detail.

There are two very important things to bear in mind, one about content, and one about style.

Content: A Press release must contain news. ‘My website exists’  isn’t news, neither, generally speaking is ‘I now sell a XYZ on my website.’  So how do you become newsworthy? There are many, many ways, but one of the simplest is to conduct a poll or send out a survey. Then your press release can report on the results. Another method is to announce a competition, then you can follow with another announcing the winner, and of course there is the least exciting press release of all, announcing a sale (yawn).

Style. Even though you are writing about your company, you must write in the third person, in other words write the release as though you were a reporter writing about a company you were not involved with.

As the video about shows, the inverted triangle of a new story is the standard way to write a release, but here’s another video which looks at the separate sections in turn.

Of course many of the press release distribution sites have their own format  that you need to follow, but most require all the elements discussed in the video.

How Much Should I Charge for A Press Release?

One of the biggest problems with a writing career online is that although there are many people desperate for content ( hurray!) they don’t want to pay very much for it ( boo, hiss) and this, I think is one reason why there are so many articles out there are just not worth reading.

Not so with press releases. Don’t believe me, here’s a useful articles I found the other day, which talks about how much a press release costs. The prospects, as you can see, are a little better than with articles, and the good thing is you can practice by writing your own!

If you’re looking for more information on this lucrative type of writing, watch this space, and information product is coming soon!