Guest blogging vs press releases?

Hi, this is Max. I wonder what works better to build authority in your niche and get a lot of targeted traffic.

In both cases authority sites endorse you as an expert to their audiences. So you build trust and recognition. Endorsed traffic converts in leads and sales better in fact.

To me, press release is more profitable. This is a fast and easy business solution. Let's say you wrote an awesome book based on your expertise. You just pay the same company to have a press release about it written and distributed in shortest time. You reach thousands of social media outlets with no problem.

With guest blogging you have to dance around authority blog owners trying to build relations. Spend too much time reading and commenting their blog posts, communicating with them, making content for them. Your content gets rejected, or you're forced to write for them on the weekly basis, they ask you to rewrite something, tell you what to do, etc. It seems like you work for them and they're your bosses. Meanwhile, you can't work for more than only 3-5 authority blogs at the same time as a guest author, it's too exhausting. So your circle of influence is too small.

Hiring guest bloggers is a very bad idea. First, it's too expensive. Second, they are not you and sound differently. Even if it's a ghostwriter and people don't know it's not you they're interacting with wrong person.