HARO Help a Reporter Out

I signed up for their $ 19/​month subscription, and then once I logged in I found that the website doesn’t really work correctly. Then I found that the link to cancel your subscription is a blank page (bad sign!). And their «support» link is broken. So I tried to contact them with their contact form and there has been no response. Same for their email addresses.
Most of the reviews and mentions of the HARO seems to have stopped around 2013. I suspect the domain was bought by a scammer who is now charging credit cards for a website that doesn’t work.

** BEFORE — a 1 STAR REVIEW **
Original: «This is going to be my first, one and only 1 star review. As a publisher, we get lousy reviews and mean people with no lives all the time.
I signed up for this „service“ back in May and I can pretty much guarantee to others that while I’ve seen what appear to be legitimate publications/​reporters appearing in their mailings, what happens when you RESPOND to queries with expert info that you do have is the part to be aware of.
The few times I’ve responded with queries to radio or other media with information we actually had, it turned into requests for payment.
That’s right: paid interviews, paid placement. In my opinion, as a former person who worked for some pretty big newspapers (I have never called myself a „journalist“) that was called „Payola.“ This was outlawed in the music industry (I am a former radio DJ/​newsperson also) in the late 50s. Like, before I was born.
I am using the new service „Wikiwand“ by the way. It makes Wikipedia articles much nicer and mobile/​tablet friendly.
HARO at least for us has been a scam. People who put out queries are either not real reporters or journalists, or they are running shows requesting payment for interviews or requesting payment for articles.»
** AFTER — a 5 STAR REVIEW **
Stacey, a HARO Community Senior Manager, contacted me via Twitter to say that HARO did not support people using the service to get money from sources.
I sent them the information I had about who had asked for payment. Stacey and another HARO employee immediately responded and took action.
HARO doesn’t support payola or requests for money in exchange for reviews or interviews.

HARO is a unique resource for connecting journalists with people to interview. The journalists benefit from being able to connect with «expert» sources, and the «sources» benefit from getting media visibility for their business or projects, in the context of being cited, quoted, or interviewed as an expert.
I haven’t been able to find anything else quite like HARO out there. The closest competitor is ProfNet, which is a paid service. While I haven’t tried ProfNet, it doesn’t look compelling enough to make me want to pay for it when HARO works so well.
One thing I will say about HARO: it got me results within a few weeks of using it (as a source), primarily with the intention of promoting my website
. I have had a pretty good percentage of the journalists I contacted write back to me, and some of these have ended up using my stuff in articles. I haven’t hit really big mega-​publicity, nor has HARO been the largest source of publicity for my website, but so far the amount of publicity I’ve gotten has been good relative to the amount of effort I’ve put in – and it’s helped me attract a type of publicity that I didn’t know how to easily connect with otherwise.
Why not five stars? HARO is a pretty minimal service… it’s basically just an email list. It could be so much more, and with minimal effort. The filtering features are extremely primitive. Because it’s just an email list, repeat queries come up again and again – I can’t flag one once and filter it out. And there are no regional filters: I am located in the Philly metro area, and I’d like to filter out inquiries that are limited to other metro areas, but I can’t – this feature isn’t built into the site yet. Just one example. The site I run, RateTea, is MUCH more complex than HARO, and I’m no web programming expert. I think I could do a better job of fine-​tuning HARO if I were running it.
Also, HARO is much better in some areas than others. There’s a ton of material that comes through in the area of business and marketing. There’s a fair amount in health care and medicine… and a trickle related to food and drink (the area I was most interested in). Other areas I’ve been interested in, like nature and ecology, politics, religion, it’s been close to zero – perhaps one inquiry every other day or so, at most – and I know journalists write about these topics all the time, they just don’t seem to use HARO.
Lastly, there are some queries that slip through that are a waste of time. Some of the reviewers here point out that HARO cherry-​picks whose queries get approved. I’ll say, as a source, I think they’re already a bit too lenient. I have seen quite a few «media outlets» represented that when I actually check them out, they’re basically a one-​person blog. I don’t like that they use Alexa rank as a criterion for including/​excluding sources, because Alexa rank is so easily manipulated and, unless you’re looking at like the top 1000 websites, does not correspond closely to web traffic. I also think a media outlet can be low-​traffic but high-​quality, and vice-​versa. So I wish they used different selection criteria.
Addressing these concerns would move HARO up to 5 stars.
One thing that has been good is that the HARO staff are very responsive to dealing with problems, like journalists who violate the terms of use, bugs in the system, or other concerns. Every time I’ve emailed them I’ve had the concern quickly and fully addressed. That’s very good, in my opinion!
Oh, also, one last note, the emails are unpredictable. They don’t always arrive at the same time, and I’ve had problems with them getting caught in gmail’s spam filter. Also, some are longer than others and some are more useful than others. It is a crap shoot, some weeks I’ve gotten a ton of interaction out of it, other weeks has been pretty much dead for me.

If you’re a reporter looking for sources, they cherry pick who’s queries get approved. After you sign on as a reporter, they begin hounding you to upgrade to their paid services — even when you tell them that you’re not interested at the moment.
Then you submit queries, and it’s a crap shoot whether or not they’ll actually post them. Some will post, then others will be ignored. And if you put a long deadline (i.e. more than 2 or 3 days away), you can pretty much be guaranteed that unless you’re a big name publisher, they WON’T post it.

Not all media are treated equally. A minimum Alexa score is required to join. Also, from their guidelines: «Queries for product samples will only be accepted from reporters representing TV stations and verified print media. Product sample requests from websites or radio station reporters are not permitted.» It goes on to say that this is as a safety against «scams and fraud.»

HARO is a resource I stumbled upon one day months ago while surfing the web. It services both journalists looking for people to interview for articles they’re writing and the resources (people like you and me) who may be the right candidates to help journalists write those articles.
If you’re a small business owner this is a great way to get free press. For instance, an accountant signs up at HARO and watches the daily digests for reporters looking to interview accountants. Accountant sees journalist request to interview accountants and sends contact informaton to journalist. Presto free, press.
I recently used HARO for a project I was working on as I’m editor for a national publication and had an author drop out at the last minute. Within less than 12 hours I had more than enough candidates to interview for an article needed in the next 24 hours.
So needless to say, I’m sold on HARO! It works.