G'day Again Ken,

Sorry about the last post - I didn't intend the full thing to be posted I was planning to edit it severely first - What I had intended to do was show people the variety of features you can get for just a  few dollars a month and the liberating professionalism that can impart to your web presence.

I operate Eyebrow Raised Designs and manage hosting and domains for a variety of people.  I also own several domains - some personal, some academic, some business.  Every one of the sites I maintain is a reflection on my professionalism.

Domain names can be had for as little as $1.99 as you showed - for about $3 a month you can get a  simple WebSite Tonight package that works well for many small businesses.  For about $4 per month you can get a massive 5Gb of storage space and 250Gb of bandwidth.  I'm nowhere near using those limits on any of my sites!!

By hosting your own sites you also have the benefit of accessing Google AdSense to generate additional income streams via your site.  A friend of mine makes $6000 a year from AdSense via a small website he maintains for the benefit of Drama Teachers.

I wouldn't go back to free hosting accounts - I started with Geocities years ago and it was a great place to learn about site layout and design, but not apropriate in a contemporary business environment.

I hope this post is more fittign to the context.

Cheers

Kim

Hi Kenneth,

I couldn't agree more with your comments and those that Michael has made.  Free is ok for a site for your personal entertainment but...

For a start, for all those people that "cant afford" a domain, then they cant afford that McDonalds either - It's relative.  It seems a small price to pay for complete independence from other peoples' sites.  In addition, most reputable Web hosts provide a good after sales service if you run into problems.

And for a business - a free hosted site gives a bad impression of the business's professionalism and  economic viability - especially when their products cost more than the price of a hosted domain!

Saludos
Jenny.

Jenny SJ Wrote:

And for a business - a free hosted site gives a bad impression of the business's professionalism and  economic viability - especially when their products cost more than the price of a hosted domain!

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Yes!  SO true!  How can you POSSIBLY expect someone to make a purchase from your site when your products appear to be more expensive than the location from which you sell it?  (Again, the "Selling GENUINE Rolexes on a Street Corner" example). 

Bravo!  Excellent point. 

Michael

Well so many things have been said about Free and Paid Hosting. All I have to say is that we all have a beginning but the difference between those who are successful online and those who are not is that, the successful people didn't stay where they started for ever. When it was time to move to an higher level, they did without hesitating.

We can start with free hosting but it should not be our end point. Apart from professionalism, the free service does not bring any form of support. Your business can go off and nobody will be ready to attend to you.

I am a website designer and I design a site for a friend who insisted that it be hosted on a free hosting account. Well after few months, the site was removed and the guy had to be running around for another one.

So if you are going to use free hosting, think of the zero support you will get when trouble comes.

I joined a program some weeks back and discover that part of their resources, is a FREE web hosting package. This is not one that has ads pasted on it. It is a FULL 100MB hosting account. It is a collaboration between the hosting company and the website owner. All you need do is to get a domain name.

You also get a free Autoresponder account, Email Aces. So if your reason for using free hosting is to learn, then this is the place for you.  They have in place EXCELLENT ecourses you can learn from.

You can check it out here:

http://10000hits.net/default.aspx?userid=1972714

Hope this helps someone

Adebola

Hey Kenneth,

 

  Free accounts, sometimes make a great resource too. I know, you give and give, but they are easily accessable and often listed by the host. I have had a freewebs account for some time, and get a steady stream of shared interest traffic from them, same with my old geosite on yahoo, which was ranked on yahoo in less than two months.

 

  Free websites are basically sub-domains, and all the traffic to those pages is picked up on by the search engine spiders. I have several paid domains and use these free ones to link to them and act as a silent salesman. Since I do not pay to promote these free websites, and get on average 200-800 hits a day off the main sites web-rankings I end up getting free visitors to my other sites with very little effort.

  Take Bizzy Blogz , free webs, and geosites and run them through say google or yahoo search. The first 5-10 listings will be ones paid for or earned by the host, but you get a return on more than 1,000 listings for each, most of these are free sites that are active, and get traffic from other free programs, but all are ranked higher individually because of the search engine rankings of the host.

  I do not recomend the final sale of any product to be completed on a free website, but I do say that a good lead in page on one of these hundreds of tools can be a major shot in the arm for your business.

 

Andy Zeus Anderson