Paid option:
Do a paid press release on prweb.com.

Free options:

1) To respond to reporters that are looking for content related to your product, subscribe to HARO (helpareporter.com) and check it daily and respond to relevant requests with information on your product.

2) To actively pitch your product story to reporters, first find the right ones:
A) In google type in keywords relevant to your product.
B) Click on the 'news' category
C) filter the results by 'recent' or 'blog'

Some journalists cover a particular topic, others cover particular region. Find the ones in each category relevant to your product.

To contact them, look them up on Linkedin, Twitter, etc. In your correspondence, make sure you show them that you've read what they've written about in the past and describe your product and how it's relevant. They need reads / hits on the article to get paid, so make sure to frame your story in a way that would help them do that.

If you'd like more specific advice on how to frame your product for particular stories, etc. let me know,

Lee

Marketwired.com is the most cost-effective wire service and comes with the best analytics report to show clients what they received for their money such as what media outlets picked up the release, the number of press release views and the number of click throughs as well as the geographic response rate by country and shares on social media.

As a former journalist, I can tell you that using any free wire service is the quickest way for a reporter to hit the delete button. Fraudulent people/companies like to use the free wire services and after getting burned a couple of times, reporters learn to stay away from free.

Reputable companies are willing to pay the wire service fee.

The answer depends on your goals. Do you want to generate stories online? In broadcast (radio/TV) media? Print media? Industry publications? Or maybe you want to position yourself and/or your company as a leader in your field? Or drive traffic to your website or create an SEO boost for your site? Or meet financial disclosure regulations?

I'm going to assume your goal is to generate news stories. The best way to earn media attention is through very specific targeting of your press release to individual journalists who cover your beat (the subject area your press release is about, such as business, or womens' issues or motorsports, for example) AND the topic of your specific release. I don't know of any press release distribution services can promise that (even the paid ones). Their targeting is not very narrow, and most don't have the ability to target recent related stories.

Most public relations pros like me subscribe to a media database service that allows us to do this granular level of targeting. Unfortunately, if you're interested in free distribution, the fees for these databases are probably out of your range. However, you can identify journalists manually by making Google News your friend and searching for recent stories about your topic. Most online news outlets post journalists' email address or Twitter handle, or offer an online form for contacting them.

Most free online press release posting sites have gone the way of the rotary phone. Google used to look favorably on links in press releases for SEO purposes, but that's no longer the case, so there are few left to choose from. The best way to find one is to search Google for "free SEO press release distribution 2016."

Then, to make sure the site's releases are picked up by Google News, search for the site at https://www.news.google.com. Let's pretend our distribution site is called FreelancePR.com. In the Google News search bar, you would type the following, without the brackets: [site:freelancepr.com] (yes, there's no space after the colon) and look for anything that seems to be a press release. Make sure to narrow your search results down to items posted in the previous week (because free press release sites are often de-indexed.)

If nothing from the site shows up in Google News, it's probably not worth trying. It's not there because Google doesn't consider it to be an authoritative source of content.

I'm not currently aware of any truly free PR distribution sites that are indexed by Google News. As others have said, you will probably have to pay to post your news online.

I’ve done a good amount of this type of work for B2B companies. If you have a B2B venture, trade publications for your target market/industry are a great start. Many run press releases virtually verbatim if they’re relevant to the readership. A local general business publication will also likely be a good outlet. Publication websites generally provide instructions for submitting press releases. To get more substantive coverage, you will need to personally connect with reporters and editors (again, publication websites usually have contact info).
Good luck and let me know if you need more assistance.

We used EIN Presswire for a recent event and received a 32% increase in visitors and attendees. I recommend them.