So, says it in the title bar,

what is the best ways to advertise?
free & paid?

please could people help me out here, thank you

regards,

Thread moved to a more appropriate forum. You should use the "search" feature and browse around this forum (Promotion and Marketing), too.

http://www.hostingdiscussion.com/search.php

Hello,

Free is always much better but it takes a lot of time. If you are new to web hosting it’s not a good idea to go straight into paid advertising because you need to build a presence on forums first.

Jack

You should try out free methods first. Some examples would be the use of social networking or word of mouth.

I would try free methods especially at initial stage.
For advertise methods, you may refer this thread :
What advertisement methods you use?

Free advertising will required some time but quit better than paid one. Whereas paid advertising like PPC advertising you are paying for per click. Assume that you are paying for 100 clicks whatever it may be and have only one customer just of 100 visitors then it can be worthless. So free advertising is quit effective if you want to save your money.

It all depends on financial resources, your business plan and experience. Not all businesses start on a shoestring.

Free is always good, but where, what are the best places to advertise for free and how? Free Press releases, Forum Posts, Listing like at dmoz.org or else?

It's funny that people continuously ask this question.

Honestly, if a company finds an affordable means of advertising with a good ROI, they are typically not going to share the info.

It would be like competing in a race and finding a shortcut and then telling all your opponents about it.

A very good point

Always try the free methods! It all depends on your business, of course, and usually it takes a little trial to find your prefect "mix". Best of luck.

You need to begin the advertising campaigns and then experience for yourself. Some paid options like using Google AdWords could be always ready to be used and your first visitors could find your site within hours or even minutes after your ads go live over the net. Talking about free marketing tools, you may try out solutions like press release, writing and submitting articles and also working on your website's SEO.

Search Engines like google, bing offer great rates for text ads you can also like most people who have replied take the route of forums, and social networking sites like ex. facebook or twitter.

i agree with that steve.

Regards,

The best form of advertising (IMO) is word of mouth. But of course this presents a vicious circle, because to get WOM advertising, you already need clients. I guess what I'm saying is getting those first few clients is the biggest hurdle, but there's a tonne of free ways of advertising your service.

It's a good point, and I agree with you. If you had a great and highly demanded product, and you were ready with your website, and if you can afford it, it's worth to go for good paid advertising programs like Google Adwords.