Free Hosting Strategy!

[charlesgan]

(seem like its the right place to post this here)

i am very new to free hosting service, and its a very tricky business as i seen. Here is what i 'planning'
(not promoting myself, i not yet have this service)...

"100MB of free hosting space, 1GB bandwidth, cpanel, fantastico, pop email, Mysql, PHP for sure, etc etc. But, with ads on footer, no other ads, no forum posting. Will this free hosting be attractive enough?

...and As per your experience or opinion, how many signup will i gain per mth??

[Administrator]

It seems to be an attractive offer but its not worth to run free hosting service. One of my friend was doing so for couple of years but eventually he had to bear loss in free hosting business and I got him to remove free hosting from his hosting website.

Think before you proceed as you seem to be quite young and enthusiastic so get some suggestion before you proceed.

[kev woodman]

If you're doing this to make money then what you should be asking is how many click throughs do I need to earn each month to pay my hosting bills. You can find estimates for click through rates on the net which will give you some idea of the number of visitors the sites you are hosting are going to need to get.

I'd say you're going to find yourself losing money quickly so if you're going to try it make sure you limit the bandwidth on the sites so you don't get hit with uncontrollable bandwidth costs.

[charlesgan]

yup, i know that free hosting is hard to run. unless by the hosting company themself the hope user might upgrade somedays.

i have a different way to profit from these, hope it works. just got the domain name, will setup soon

[kev woodman]

Well good luck and let us know how it goes.

[Celestialvie]

There's a lot and I mean " a lot" of websites that offered free hosting that had to close down after a while. So it is a very risky move. Unless if you are really earning from ads and are covering your expenses as well.

[Kleky]

I think only some very big companies can afford that.
It's best to wait for you to get some users.

[Administrator]

Why big companies will start free hosting ?

When you have so many paying customers then why would you like to offer free hosting and loose your credibility in market due to bad postings by customers using your free hosting service.

[Kleky]

Originally Posted by Administrator

Why big companies will start free hosting ?

When you have so many paying customers then why would you like to offer free hosting and loose your credibility in market due to bad postings by customers using your free hosting service.

That's the truth.
But small companies would loose a lot of money, time and patience with that.

[kev woodman]

There's a business case for large organisations to offer free hosting. In fact there are some obvious examples of this such as Blogger and Live Spaces. They may be limited in some ways when compared to a 'normal' hosting account but they still offer people Web space in which to publish. It wouldn't be inconceivable for Google to offer less restrictive Web space which coud then be used to rpomote it's own services in exacylt the same way as Gmail, Documents and Spreadsheets etc.

[Kleky]

Originally Posted by kev woodman

There's a business case for large organisations to offer free hosting. In fact there are some obvious examples of this such as Blogger and Live Spaces. They may be limited in some ways when compared to a 'normal' hosting account but they still offer people Web space in which to publish. It wouldn't be inconceivable for Google to offer less restrictive Web space which coud then be used to rpomote it's own services in exacylt the same way as Gmail, Documents and Spreadsheets etc.

Hmmm, really nice said.

[Kleky]

Maybe it's the best way to offer sponsored hosting!
To have a talk with your buyers!
That's an interasting idea.

[panicattack]

I think being able to give free hosting is an investment that might take a while for you to recover your cost. But if in the first place, you do have a lot fo space and bandwidth, then why not share it to people and get some loyal visitors to your website. continue to increase members, run advertising on your site and soon enough, money will come in.

[kev woodman]

People have tried this approach before - it just doesn't appear to work.

[Kleky]

Originally Posted by kev woodman

People have tried this approach before - it just doesn't appear to work.

Free hostings will always stay free hostings...
If I'm going to buy a hosting, I'm not going to buy one from company which provides free hosting.