Thursday 20 October 2011

Free Blog Hosting Is Not For Generating Revenues

Many people think the only thing they have to do to start making money online is set up a free blog and get their ideas out there into the world. Invariably, someone will see said ideas and start throwing money at them. This is not the way that it works. Free blog hosting service providers do not give their users the power needed to operate their sites with complete and total autonomy. In order to do that, you will need a paid plan. But to get to the point where a paid plan is worth your while, you will need to grow your audience. And doing that requires that you have a passion for your subject, and a commitment to creating something pertaining to that subject that people will want to know more about.
Free blog hosting is not for revenue generating. At least as far as your concerned. While it can get a company more recognized in the search engines, which can lead to better advertising revenue for them, it can do very little for the website entrepreneur, who wants to take his passion and turn it into something wholly sustainable on its own. Here are some of the main reasons why you should move to a paid blog hosting plan as soon as you can:
1. Paid Hosting Plans Mean You Can Get Paid
If you want to earn serious money that has the possibility of making you wealthy or at least comfortable, then you will want to start paying for a plan as soon as humanly possible. Paid plans get you more power and give you more freedom than any free blog hosting service ever could. Furthermore, it means that you have the power to start selling advertising space in more significant chunks than the text ads that are often featured on free blog platforms. And since you're pulling in more traffic than you would be on a free platform, it's possible to attract advertisers.
2. Paid Hosting Allows Autonomy for Content
No one can tell you on a paid hosting platform what you can and cannot say. They cannot tell you what revenue generating methods you must use. You are in complete control of your site's destiny for the entire length of time that you are the owner. This freedom allows you to develop your site into something that is not afraid to take chances. It allows your site to better learn from its failures and build a sense of community among the visitors.
Until you can do the things mentioned above, you are not going to earn anything with your site. That's why it is important to get off the free hosting platform as soon as you can and get a paid plan that works for you.

Cheap Web Hosting Vs. Free Hosting

Low cost web hosting services are many. Free hosting packages are even more, and look lucrative. After all you need to have your web site up and running on the internet with no financial burden. All you need is create your site, sit back and let your hosting provider set it up for you. There's no denying that this type of service can work for many people but will it work for you ongoing? Let's walk you through the merits and demerits and see whether you might be better off choosing a low cost web hosting package instead.
So, what is the main advantage of free hosting? Well, it's free for one thing! When you registered with your ISP (Internet Service Provider) you'll probably have been offered free web space.
You can also find a lot of web hosting companies that will offer free space. So, opt for this choice and you create your site (many ISPs will help you do this too via their software), upload it and they give it a home on the web. Sounds too good to be true? Well, for many people it is - and they move very quickly to a low cost web hosting package instead.
A free hosting package isn't a bad option for some people. It's an OK solution for personal web sites, can be used to test out your site and the response it gets and works for some small business owners. However, before you opt for free hosting, you should take a look at whether a low cost web hosting package might suit your needs better.
The problem with free hosting is that it has limits. You may well say that low cost web hosting has limits too - but they're generally not as restricting. The first issue you'll come across is space. Your free hosting provider will only offer small space for your site. You'll be limited on the number of pages you can have and the design, images and technical packages you can use. You also have none of the uptime guarantees and support services that you'll get if you pay for a hosting service. After all, you're getting this for free, so your provider doesn't have to make any commitment to sort out problems quickly. Find yourself with slow loading times because there are too many sites on their server and too much traffic? They don't have to do ANYTHING about it.
Low cost web hosting packages also have another big advantage over free ones - advertisements. Opt to put your site on a free service and you'll have to have any banners, adverts, pop-ups and pop-unders that they want appearing on your site. This is how the hosting provider makes the money that you aren't paying them for the service! There isn't a bigger advertisement out there to your site visitors that you're on a free package. Well, there is one bigger one...your URL. Instead of a nice and neat http://www.anything.com you'll have to have a URL that drills down from that of your hosting provider. Maybe you don't mind turning your neat web address into [http://www.domain.com/pages/anything] - but it might make a difference later if you choose to move to a paid service. You won't be able to take it with you and will have to start off all over again.
And, there is some evidence that search engines now treat websites with free hosting as low priority in the search stakes. So, your site may not be indexed on a search, which will make it invisible to the browser. This isn't a problem you'll have with low cost web hosting. The fact is that it doesn't have to cost a lot to put your site on a reputable and cost-effective paid hosting service. You really just need to weigh up the benefits of having your site hosted free or for a few dollars a month. If you are running a business web site, want more than a basic service or anticipate any kind of regular traffic, it will be better to pay. After all, if your web site looks better and works better with a low cost web hosting provider then you'll get more out of it in the long-run.

Disadvantages Of Free Hosting

Undeniably, web hosting is the biggest online business today. Since practically every web site needs hosting, with the millions of sites existing in the worldwide web today, there is definitely a great demand for hosting services.
While it is beyond doubt the web hosting is needed in order to make a particular product, service, organization, and individual accessible in the worldwide web, choosing the appropriate hosting is sometimes not very easy. First and foremost, there are many different companies that offer hosting services and various features. Second, there are also a lot of plans to choose from that somehow determining the plan that would suit your site's needs is pretty taxing to do. However, if you patiently scrutinize every hosting plan available, you will definitely find the perfect plan for you.
Some of the most common web hosting services are shared hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, and Virtual Private Server among others. Each of these plans offer different features and hosting capacities. Basically, the standard features of basic web hosting include unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, and domain hosting. However, different sites have different needs as such some web sites require more than just the standard features that basic hosting offers, thus opting for hosting plans that cater to the web site's needs.
On the other hand, most web sites opt for free hosting. Aside from the fact that this hosting service is free, it also seemingly caters to the basic needs of "smaller" sites. Indeed, free web hosting is very enticing, but if you really look at the total package, you will definitely think otherwise. Free web hosts offer little or even no support at all. It is very seldom that you find free web hosts that offer customer support. Not many new free users may know this, but neglectful support can ruin a hosting experience; which may not be good for any web site at all.
Since many users would prefer free hosting, overcrowding of servers is expected. Free hosts are never known for their reliability and uptime. The overcrowding of servers result to slow uptime, and even worse, servers are frequently down.
In any business, you usually get what you pay for. Since you are not paying anything for free hosting, then surely you cannot expect something big. Free web hosting does not include advanced features, software, and email services that paid hosting services do. While this may seem acceptable for some web sites, in the long run, web sites may have bigger and greater requirements that cannot be sufficiently provided by the basic features that free hosts offer anymore.
Finally, free web sites also come with intrusive ad banners and pop up windows. Now, this is definitely a nuisance to the site's visitors. Unfortunately, free hosts add advertisements in the form of text link, banner, or pop up to free users' web sites. As such, visitors are interrupted whenever these ad banners and pop ups interfere as they are browsing through the web site.

Web Hosting Tips When Acquiring Free Services

For small-scale businesses wanting to jump-start their ventures through a website, getting free web hosting services can be very ideal. Small businesses can take advantage of this really good deal as they wouldn't need to worry about additional operational costs just to afford the services of an excellent web host.
If you are already thinking about getting your own website and subscribing to a web host, you need to carefully consider the factors that you need to deal with when you acquire a free hosting service. Some hosts offer free services because they gain profit through advertising. Though this is a very cost-effective decision, there are matters which directly affect your website functionality because of the limited tools offered in a setup such as this.
First and foremost, identify the main focus of your website. Is it to gain profit or do you want to establish a really good foundation in the online business to ensure that your business will run smoothly and gradually increase your profitability? If you wish to generate sales at the soonest possible time you have to consider the option of paying for your hosting services because of the certain features that you need to add to your website in order to make it very effective.
If it is mainly about generating sales and you want to consider free hosting services for your website, you may want to think about your target market's expectations. This is because free web hosting services offer limited functionalities that may not be able to satisfy a user's needs. To be specific, free hosting may fail you in terms of technical support as you may not be able to get the assistance of qualified experts at the soon as technical difficulties bog down the site.
Free hosting service also controls most of the content which will be provided in your site. Your web design may be limited and certain advertisements will be inserted in your web pages, some of which are irrelevant to the theme of your website. This is something which you may not be able to control, as advertisements are what keep your service free of charge.
Search engine optimization is one of the vital elements in keeping a website alive. But in free web hosting services, this element may lose its functionality as it could be hard to attain an acceptable ranking in search engine results pages. This is because a website hosted on a free server is provided with a sub-domain name which is added to a portion of the site's URL.
If you want to ensure that you get a secure, accessible, and reliable service you may really need to shell out some money. Getting something for free entails limitations and less site functionality, so it is important to carefully assess the web hosting services available and determine which one can offer the best functionality to help you maintain a really powerful website.
Establish a really good website by carefully planning your web design and hosting services. Web hosting service is the main pillar of a website and this can make or break your website success, so take the time to assess which service will help you get where you want to be.

Is Free Hosting Really Free?

Sooner or later, as everyone finds out, nothing in this world is free. Although there are literally hundreds of Free Hosting adds surfacing on the Internet, no one can stay in business very long giving it away. So how can hosting services offer free hosting?
Easy.
One way is to make some of their money from registering your domain name. Domain registration is a necessary step for any future web site owner, (some low cost host play a numbers game between your monthly cost and your yearly domain registration fee, for example:
$5/month and $30 registration fee, or $7/month and only $6 to register, or...... you get the picture).
Another way they make money is to add advertising onto your web page. They will get paid either each time the banner is shown, or each time someone clicks on the advertisement.
Some will offer extra add ons like Spam or Virus Protection, Domain Theft Protection, or other services at an additional cost. Of course if you feel you have need for these services, then you should purchase them.
There are also limitations such as storage space, bandwidth, number of email accounts, and
so on, in hopes that you will need more later and decide to upgrade.
So are the so called Free Hosting Services even worth the time to consider?
Sure they are! There are situations where someone may not need tons of storage, bandwidth, email, and so on. Just find a
host that offers what you need without to many compromises. One such host that I use quite often is doteasy.com. No banners, only a yearly domain registration. And for me, they've always
responded to my questions within 24 hours by email.
So if your new at web page development, just want your own personal web page, ect., and don't really have that intensive of system requirements, then Free Hosting is the way to go.