Counting the Cost of Free
By Michael Smith   ©2004 All Rights Reserved

The free hosting market is changing daily. So are their requirements and services. Many of the services and resources that the "FREE" websites have to offer can be very tempting to the beginning on-line marketer. Especially, the "NO COST" part!!! But, before you jump into it with all four feet, make sure you know what you are getting your business into.... Free Ain't Free.

Most Free Hosting Programs offer a FREE online site designer - is easy to use and and understand. PERFECT for the beginning web-designer, right? Sure is. But most beginners don't understand the process of actually putting a site on line, including using FTP (file transfer protocol). There are many things involved in "properly" getting a site online. Likewise there is an abundance of misinformation, or deliberate lack there-of. These companies mislead you into thinking you are getting FREE space with their "easy-to-use" site designer. It is more than likely that once you build your site with their tools, you will never be able to transfer it when you're ready to go with your own domain name and hosting, let alone even get it to your own computer. Once your site is up they bombard your visitors with Pop-up windows and put their banners in the key positions. This takes away from the presentation of your own services. Unless they offer FTP (file transfer protocol) for transferring your HTML to their server, it is history when you upgrade to quality hosting. Other problems arise like slow servers because of overload, down time, locking in your Domain name if you register through them. The actual "COST of Free" is endless to your Ebusiness. Maybe you CAN afford the expense of purchasing your own domain, but need to take advantage of a free hosting service for a while. Just make sure before you dive in, that they won't tie up your domain name and make it impossible for you to transfer - EVER. This is common for many of them. We've seen it happen too many times. You'll sacrifice Speed, Accessibility, Versatility. Most free hosts only give you online mail, rather than your own personal POP3 or IMAP accounts of which you have FULL control. As mentioned above,most require you to use their building tools. The majority will not give you the ability to offer any kind of downloads from your site, or use any kind of cgi scripts. And all of them, in one form or another will be using you as an advertising vehicle - whether it means imposing frames on your site, or pop-up ads, all of which take away from your product, and can affect the speed of your site. We could go on and on but you get the drift. We could write an E-Book (a big one) on all of the reasons to NOT use FREE hosting because it has a major price: E-Business failure! We have made the mistake of recommending free services before and then they changed their policies and we looked foolish as a result. End result is always the same. Bottom line - you are ALWAYS giving up some level of control over your business, which you are working day and night to build. When you get down to the fine print you will always find a catch. You always pay a price -that will ultimately be expressed as a dollar amount, when it comes to your Ebusiness. Have a question? PLEASE e-mail us!
mailto:webmaster@makemoneyhowto.com

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MICHAEL SMITH is owner of Coyote Marketing, (CM/YMTC) where you can get Your Own E-Business Website For Pocket Change. Learn HOW to Launch Your Own E-Business, NOT someone else's mirror site! http://cmymtc.com/index1.htm

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