Should affiliates even bother with press releases?

Right Cathy, some press releases can indeed be news worthy

Marcia,

Well I look at Press Releases in a whole different way... Let's see if I can answer some of these questions or statements.

1)It's impossible to get authoritative quotes from them about the product/service.

If you use the product or use testimonials to cover this angle. Third party first hand experience is some of the best because they have unbiased opinions of what they like and or dislike about the product they purchased and used. You can also look to other experts in that market to give authoritative quotes about techniques or other information the product specifically addresses or solves.

2)The affiliate is unlikely to have a newsworthy angle on the product that relates specifically to the affiliate and not to the product/service/company.

A true affiliate is promoting in a market he knows well so it's fairly easy to link a real newsworthy angle by looking in the headlines of news authority sites and see if there is a way to relate the product to what's currently happening in the news.

3)If the press release did spark media interest, it would benefit the company and not the affiliate.

I use press releases to direct attention to my own sites or parts their of and never the product owners.
(HINT: Create a video about the product and direct people from your press release to your video for more detailed information)

That's a good example of one of the differences between online press releases vs. traditional press releases.

Even when the 'news' element would never be picked up by a journalist, it might just be interesting enough for a blogger to feature it, if it's interesting to that audience.

And there are the additional benefits of backlinks and targeting keywords for SEO traffic.

In my (limited) experience as an article writer for directories, and of course as an affiliate I attempt to link directly to a products sales page, and to my blog as well(quick "5 by".)

In general I'm finding there are two ways to write articles (at least for me, I'm certain there are far more ways, these two happen to serve the purpose at the moment);

1) to write about your field in general
2) to write specifically about the product (as in a review)

I read the release on the smoking device indicated a couple of posts up. In general it seemed very much written in the "3rd party", and very much as non advertisement. But in many ways it didn't seem any different than an articles who is writing about a given product, yet at the same time had elements of "writing about the field" in general, or product in general??

You see??? I come away with a sense that the lines are very much "merged" and very "murky" and really in many ways are not much different than your average article, albeit to be "a recent innovation" in your particular field...

my assessment(if I were to give one) is that if someone can write a "factually based article"(key word it seems in the case of a PR), you can write a PR....

If I'm wrong please tell me.....!

thank you!

Dano~

EDIT!! unbelievable! there was actually an exit "pop-up" my gosh!!! that really seems to be more of an advertisement than a press release if there is such a hard sell?