Has anyone really used an ad company before to place ads out for your hosting business? I have been debating this for a little bit, but I am not fully sure the returns would end up being worth it.

You can try out Google Adwords.

Thanks

If you're in just starting phase I would suggest to do site optimization for organic search listing.

Advertising will always help and worth to do... Especially when you advertise it in a popular advertising websites or those who have good page rank.

You can also try directory listing for your website

Because this is highly saturated business, advertising may bring effective results if the website is already popular or have brand awareness.

I find google ad words to be great help when advertising, it can just get expensive.

We are still playing around with them now but have yet to decide exactly what road to take. I see a ton of people on like digital point and so on that are selling adword vouchers, but say they can only be used once per voucher as you need a new signup to use them. Anyone know about this?

Check whether the voucher is transferable? Because many fraud is going on this.

The first thing you want to add the ads on your website is to think how to increase your web traffice in the first place.

try yahoo ads

I have tried both Google and Yahoo as well as a few other less known
it seems my best clients come from forum or free ad postings.

Remember the cat
give him a ball of yarn he'll play with it forever. Buy him something from the store he wont touch it.

It seems that Google all I did was spend money. but I didnt spend a lot
I have found a site called http://www.spyfu.com it pretty much tells you how much other sites have spent on google etc.... and unles you spend around $1 or $2K on them your business will get off to a slow start.

I found that Godaddy spent about $700 in one day. I dont have that kinda money to check and see how things go.

It will increase your site traffic but can't guarantty that you can get the good return.

I like the cat theory there too. And the note on the fraud with the voucher's is exactly what I was thinking and we decided to not even use them. I don't even know how to check if they would be fraud or not, suggestions?

For a start you can check in Google's own terms of service. It is likely that they will tell you whether transfer of a voucher is prohibited and of course if it is then any sale is fraudulent.

The cat analogy was good, now all we have to do is find an online ball of wool that we can email out to hundreds of people to get them to play....