It never fails when a newbie gets started, they are always looking for "cheap" ways to start their business. Some even have money but still decide to get started on shaky ground. Question: Would you start a donut shop in the middle of nowhere? Then why would you build your online business on someone else's terms... People search for things like free hosting, free domain names, etc and they get just what they're looking for. I learned that most of these "free" services come with some trickery. Free domains will sometimes redirect to sites with Malware which can potentially hurt your business.. Dont know much about free hosting but hosting is only like $7 a month. That's nothing compared to what you can make... A domain name is only $10 for a year! All you have to do now is create content which i strongly suggest you do on your own self hosted blog... Having a self hosted blog gives you complete control over your content. You can customize your blog exactly how you want and you can actually make more money... I recently had my wordpress.com blog banned because I linked to another site that had great content but was marketing a widely known affiliate product. Moral of the story: don't be cheap when it comes to your business. It's not expensive to run an online business; but it can be if you start out cheap...
Great post, and I agree. I have seen some pretty reliable free hosting sites, such as 000webhost. Other than that though, you are definitely on "shaky ground" when using free services. Too many people have had their blogs/content deleted from sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, Wordpress.com, etc, that it is way to much of a risk to take. Thanks for the post, and I hope it opens some eyes.
Good, sensible advice here DennisKnows. For the minimal cost of domain name and hosting anyone can start their online business with a professional image from day one. It'd be silly not to.
I stand on paid hosts as well, but I also encourage the person to freelance any service until they have the $40 to pay for the whole year. The reason is that when first starting in internet marketing, a lot of money per month that can be used in hosting fees can go to doing something else like outsourcing a few tedious jobs that could save time as well.Do anything, be a fiverr writer, be a graphics provider, anything that one can grab a hold of .... But don't stay in that mentality.
You'd want to start your business with the lowest possible capital, but I agree that you should not skimp on domain registration and hosting. You can't afford to be on a cheap webhost that keeps on going offline/going down. That would negatively impact your site and your business. There are plenty of domain registration + hosting packages on sites like Hostgator and Namecheap. Take advantage of them! Have a good day!
It's so true. You should never build a business or brand from a free website. What it actually looks like is that you are posting contents on your account through the free sites. Yet, the content that you posted would increase the ranking of the site instead of getting one of your own ranked up. It is definitely best to use and buy your own domain.
You right. Build a business on a free websites will be underestimated by the buyer. We better have the capital although smaller than free.
The OP is absolutely spot on. All these free sites and free hosting. Cmon, peeps, spend a little green to get into the game. One great tip I learned along the way, I'd like to share for getting cheap, but NOT free domains: Simply google godaddy, and an adword will pop up from GoDaddy advertising 3.99 domains. Yeah, it's a savings of 4 bucks with a coupon code, but I can get $3.99 domains all day long. Hope this helps some of the OCD "need it free" guys to crack open their wallets a bit and start with baby steps...baby steps.
Sad to say, I had it happen to me. I was on a Wordpress MU network that was later shutdown and I lost all of my content. It sucks.
I put too much time into the content on my sites and trying to build a business just to leave my work on sites that are free. You can sleep better at night when you know that you have more control over your websites and that when you get up in the morning you won't find that someone else has decided to shut you down and that your site content was not to their liking. Always take the reins of your business and assume as much responsibility for it as possible. Your business is your baby and your bank vault, treat it with care.
I hope you had your blog backed up. If you get your own server you have much more control over things and you are not at the mercy of who ever is giving you the free site. Hostmonster and Hostgator have good plans and it is fairly easy to setup a Wordpress blog