Make A Free Website? - Don’t Do It

There are plenty of hosting companies that allow you to make a website for free. You get a website builder, domain name, disk space and most even offer an email account – all for free.

Sound too good to be true?

Unless you just popped out of your mother you know that with free there is always a catch. With free they always get you in the end. Free is just a distraction. One way or another you will pay and if you do not pay you suffer.

In business there is no such thing as free or cheap (there are no free lunches). If someone is offering you something for free then they are really selling something else. If someone is offering you something cheap they are really offering you something that is not really good. A supplier offering you free lunch is going to mention all his new products, a iPod with a 60% discounted price is broken.

Why Free and Cheap Websites are Free and Cheap

If you make the mistake of opening an account with a company offering you a free website then here is what you get:

Very limited disk space. Your website needs to be small and have few images.
Limited bandwidth. If your website suddenly gets a lot of traffic the website will crash or deny access to most of the visitors.
Your domain name will be ugly. www.yourwebsite.freehosting.ab.com
You do not own the website. Read the fine print, they own your website and they can do whatever they want with it. If they want then can shut it down and send you a email stating –‘Hello Free User, We shut down your website. Have a nice day”
They will advertise on your website. You are getting a free website because they put their advertising on your website. You have no control over the placement of the advertising. And obviously you do not get any of the money they make.
Little or no support. They are running a tight budget (you did not pay them anything) so they are not going to spend time and money helping you with your problems.
Most search engines ignore free website hosts. Search engines know that people who use free web hosts are not serious about providing quality information to visitors. If the webmaster is not willing to pay a few dollars a month for quality hosting and a domain name then they cannot be serious about providing quality content.
No control. They control you. If you want to add a online store and they say no there is nothing you can do about it. Want a chat room on your website? Ask them if you can – if they say no then you will not have a chat room on your website.

Serious About Your Website - You Need to Pay A Little Money

If you want to make money with a website do not use a free or cheap host. Every type of business requires start up money, even a lemonade stand needs lemons, pitcher and cups – a website business is no exception.

Pay a little to get a good host and domain name. Even if you need to, just like with your lemonade stand, borrow it from your mother.

A Story About Free Hosting

Do not pay for hosting - here is what will happen to you:

You will sign up and have access to a free website builder. You will spend hours learning how to make a website with their custom tools. Your website will not be fancy, it will be a simple and template looking website.

The domain name will be an awkward and an easily forgettable one like yourwebsite.freehost.dd.fh. Your email address will also be a monster: yourname@ yourwebsite.freehost.dd.fh.

You are not free to do whatever you want. If they do not have the feature in their free toolbox then you cannot have that feature on your website. Like building furniture from IKEA, you are very limited with what you can make. Want to add your own personal touch? You can’t.

Over then next weeks and month you will add content to your website. You will click away on the keyboard at the coffee shop and on your bed at home. Informative, funny, engaging - your creative juices spewing out really good material.

Your website grows and traffic increases.

You begin to be proud of your website. People keep telling you that they enjoy the content. But some of them complain that there are too many advertisements on the site. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about that - the advertisements are placed there by your ‘free’ hosting company. Your free host places them there and make the money from them.

After a few months your website is booming. It is a simple site and not that pretty, but because the content is remarkable, people are talking about your website and you are getting lots of visitors.

Then it happens.

One day you get out of bed and, like every morning, check the stats of your website. You enter your logging address and are surprised to find this message instead of your stats page:

Dear Customer,

Unfortunately due to changing market conditions we are no longer able to provide you with free website hosting. We have shut down our servers and all the websites are permanently down.

Sorry for the inconvenience,

The Free Hosting Team

You lose everything. Your website is gone. Your emails are gone and nobody can email you. All the time spent learning their custom website building tools was for nothing - you will never use them again.

The worst mistake you can make, especially if your your website is a business, is to get free or cheap hosting. Do not do it.

Invest a Little Money into Your Website And Get Control and Peace of Mind

To prevent the above scenario from happening does not cost that much money.

A domain name costs around $10 a year and quality hosting costs around $10 per month. This is a small investment to make for the control it gives you.

By purchasing your own hosting service you do not need to worry about your website suddenly being taken down. You can put whatever you want on the website, you can use any tools you want to make the website, if you traffic increases you can upgrade your account to allow for more bandwidth, and best of all you can place your own advertising on the website.

By paying around $10 a year for a domain name you can have any available domain name you want. A name that is easy to remember and describes your website. Your email account will have your domain name on it.

And of course there is the support. With a quality hosting service you get an amazing amount of support. Have a question – within a few hours you will get a response by email or instant response if you call the support hotline.

The biggest advantage of paying a little for hosting is that the website is completely yours. You do whatever you want with it – even sell it. You cannot sell of free hosted website because you do not own it.

If you really want to make money with a website, you need to pay for your own hosting account and domain name. Do not make a free website - by investing a little you get a lot.

Of course for this website I pay for hosting and a domain name. I do not regret the cost at all – its a necessary cost of business. It’s a small price to pay for the control it gives and the peace of mind it provides knowing that nobody can take my website away from me.

This website uses the hosting and domain name services of www.worldforwebsites.com. I use it and I recommend it.

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