A press release distribution checklist, in the order things go wrong

Ordered by what actually goes wrong, not by what is easiest to check. Category refusals cost you the whole purchase, so they come first; copy is fixable, so it comes last.

Before you pay

1. Is your category accepted?

This is where money is genuinely lost, because at least one vendor states in writing that submissions failing compliance review "may be delayed, rejected, or permanently blocked" and that refunds will not be issued in those cases.

• Read the wire's published policy, not the reseller's. PRWeb bans cryptocurrency and venture funding announcements outright. EIN Presswire bans all supplements "irrespective of legality", plus gambling, adult, forex and firearms — but allows crypto with a transparency gate. Newsfile requires a CoinMarketCap tracked listing for any crypto asset and bars "promises of profit/revenue/income" in any copy.
• Note that three of the largest networks publish nothing. Business Wire, GlobeNewswire and ACCESS Newswire have no public content policy. For those, get the answer from a salesperson in writing and keep the email.
• Check the adjacent categories. A general retailer with one supplement SKU, a studio described as a "gaming company", a proptech firm announcing a Series A — these are the refusals people do not see coming. The published refusals by category is the map.
• Check your own payment processor if you are reselling. Stripe's restricted businesses list prohibits gambling, sweepstakes and contests, and adult content.

2. What does the meter actually charge?

• Count the words in the finished draft, including headline, sub-headline, quote, boilerplate and any forward-looking statements block.
• Find the overage rate. PR Newswire's 2024 card includes 400 words on US1 National at $1,020 and charges $325 per additional 100; the financial circuits charge $1,535 and $2,760.
• Price the multimedia separately. Logo $595, image, video or audio $490 each, PDF $490 on the same card. ACCESS Newswire and Newswire.com publish unlimited words and images instead.
• Check for a membership or platform fee. The Cision card charges $305 a year before a single release.
• Then compare like for like. A cheap circuit with an expensive meter loses to an expensive tier with unlimited words on any release over about 600 words.

3. What is actually in the footprint?

• Name the three outlets that matter to you, then confirm they are in the tier you are buying rather than the one above it.
• Ask whether they are guaranteed or aspirational. "Included" and "may be picked up by" wear the same logo.
• Discount the outlet count. Counts triple across a single vendor's own ladder for small price rises, which is what counting near-identical affiliate republications looks like. What a 500-outlet claim counts.
• Ask which network fulfils the order. A vendor that will not name its upstream cannot be assessed.
• Do not buy on link value. Almost every syndicated press link is nofollow or rel="sponsored" and passes no search credit. Why that is normal.

4. What happens if it goes wrong?

• Refund policy on editorial rejection, in writing.
• Refund policy if a named outlet does not publish, in writing. Most vendors do not offer one, which is defensible — nobody controls downstream republication — but you should know before, not after.
• What the report contains. A distribution list, or verified live URLs? This single question separates most similar-looking quotes. A send receipt is not a coverage report, and the one we send is published before anyone buys it.
• The submission cut-off and review queue, if you need a specific date. This is the timing constraint that actually bites; the day-of-week advice is not supported by any study we could find, and we went and read them.

Before you submit

5. The document

• Headline names the company, the action and the object, and survives truncation at about 65 characters.
• First paragraph answers who, what, when, where without depending on the headline.
• One quote, containing a fact that appears nowhere else. If deleting it loses the reader nothing, delete it.
• Boilerplate under 60 words, with no headcount, no funding total and no named customers. The URL should read correctly as plain text, because some endpoints print it rather than link it.
• Dateline and a named media contact. Missing either is a common structural rejection.
• Every load-bearing fact is in the text, not only in an image.

6. Claims and permissions

• Every number carries its basis. A figure without a period, a denominator or a source is the first thing a reporter queries and the last thing you can withdraw.
• Strike words describing credentials that do not exist. "SOC 2 certified" describes an examination report, not a certification.
• Regulated sectors: get the specialist read. Financial promotions, pre-approval drug promotion, environmental claims, fair-housing language, securities offerings and protected health information each have their own rules, and no wire checks any of them. Our sector guides set out where each line sits; none of them is legal advice.
• Quote approvals in writing, from the named person, and from a customer's communications function rather than the individual.
• Image rights cover redistribution, not just your own website. A press release is republished onto domains you cannot take content down from.

After it goes out

7. Verify, do not assume

• Open every URL. A distribution report says a release was sent, not that a page exists.
• Search the page for your company name. Some hub pages list a headline that resolves to a section index rather than an article.
• Read the link attribute. nofollow, sponsored, a redirect, plain text or absent — all five occur, and they vary by outlet within the same distribution. How to check a placement yourself takes about ten minutes.
• Record the URLs and the date. Pages are removed at the publisher's discretion; we have observed entire archive paths returning 410 Gone.
• Re-check anything you display as a badge, at least annually. A logo strip linking to a dead page is worse than no logo strip.

What no checklist can give you

No step above makes publication certain. A wire distributes; downstream sites republish at their own discretion; journalists write what they choose. Nothing here buys rankings, and nothing buys permanence.

We are a reseller — we buy distribution from wire partners and mark it up, which is the ordinary structure of this market. What we add is step 7, done for you and reported with each item marked as measured or as supplier-reported — priced with the package rather than sold as an add-on. Everything before it you can do yourself, which is why it is written out here rather than kept as a sales process.