Why should I pay for hosting when I can get a website free?
Free websites are a great idea! You can pick one up fairly easily, you don't have to pay for it - you get to have a website with no cost!
This is great for those who want to put their baby pictures up on the net - or just want to dabble with html. If you want to progress to the stage where you want to actually earn money from your website, you need to consider the saying 'you need to spend money to make money'.
This might seem a little silly if you've got a website and you aren't paying for it. After all, you'll make more money if you don't have to pay for your site - right? WRONG!!
Scenario 1:
You're great at making jewellery, and decide to sell it over the net. You get your free website, because hey - if you don't actually sell anything, you haven't lost - right? WRONG!! Who is going to chance sending you money when you're not even serious enough to pay $10 a year for a domain name? A free website selling products doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Would YOU buy products from a website with a url like http://greatjewellery.freehost.com? I know I wouldn't!!
Scenario 2:
You've got a page up which you've put some advertising on, with the aim of pulling in some extra income. You get a few hundred page views a day, you don't have to pay for your website so the income the site makes puts you in front - right? WRONG!! Once your website has a domain name, a lot more advertising companies will consider it. The 'real' advertisers out there (the ones who pay more) will not accept websites if they don't have their own domain name. Of course, there's other things they consider too (like whether your site has illegal content, or if the content of your site is well presented and of a 'reasonable' topic. By reasonable, I mean that companies like Fastclick aren't accepting entertainment sites etc. They want informative content. Other advertising companies aren't as stringent as this, and their only request is that you have a domain, legal content and a reasonable looking website.
If you have your website on a free host now - then you most likely have a popup on your site (a fairly standard setup which makes giving YOU a free website worthwhile to them). If this is the case - then you seriously need to consider paying for a webhost, and putting your OWN popup on there! Then YOU will get the income from the popups, instead of your web host! If your site gets a couple of hundred visitors a day - then any income from popups is going to offset the cost of web hosting, usually with a profit.
Doing it the easy way - free domain name and no worry about setting it up
Worldzonepro has set up a basic hosting plan designed especially for those who are using a free web host now and wish to venture into the world of 'real' hosting. They will give you a free domain name, which is free for as long as you remain signed up for the basic hosting. If you wish to change to another plan, or move hosts and take your domain with you - then you will incur a yearly fee of around $10 for the domain which is standard stuff for domains. They're just looking at getting you started!!
The basic hosting plan comes with a year of webhosting, with enough space/bandwidth to get you started. There is a cost of $30 per year for this plan, which is a great price considering you're getting a domain with it!
Another issue with getting your own domain is setting it up. You buy the domain, then need to find hosting somewhere - then you've got to find out what the nameservers are and enter them in at your registrar (where you bought the domain name). This all seems like a pretty hairy process for those who don't know what they're doing (it's pretty easy, really, but if you don't know - then you're not sure!). The beauty of the basic hosting plan (and all plans through Worldzonepro) is that you sign up for an account, enter the domain you want - and it sets it all up for you! You only need to wait a couple of days for the domain name to propogate (all domain names need to be 'broadcast' across the www so you can get to them). It takes all the worry of how to set up a domain off your shoulders!
Doing the Math
A basic hosting plan will cost you $2.50 a month. Total. INCLUDING your domain name. Now, your free web host put popups on your webpage. Now YOU will be earning the popup revenue, instead of them. Let's say you join popuptraffic - around $3 for every 1,000 popups viewed (you'll probably get a rate of around 30% popups viewed, allowing for popup killers). This means that you'll really need around 3,000 visitors to achieve your $3. This breaks down to 100 visitors a day. If your site gets this 100 visitors a day, then the popup alone will pay for your website and domain. After this, any income you make from your site is profit. If you get 500 visitors a day, you're definitely in front. If you get accepted for fastclick - then popups can be up to $5 or so for every thousand viewed. Put a cpm banner on your site, and that's pure profit. A few cpa banners (where someone has to sign up for something), search links - and you're off and running!
I highly recommend anyone who wants to use their website for either a business, or to earn some advertiser revenue, to check out the basic hosting plan. It was designed especially for people like you!
