|
Free Or Not Free -- Its Your Choice
The internet is one of the world's top sources of information,
products and just about anything else you could possibly
want. And, if you have spent any amount of time online,
you must have noticed that much of it is free.
Many home business entrepreneurs get their start online
using some of these free resources. In fact, some of them
use freebees almost exclusively.
So, just what are these valuable assets that attract so
many home business newbies? Here are just a few:
1. Email - one can get free email accounts just about anywhere
(MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Google GMail, Lycos) plus tons
of others. Actually, free email accounts can be very useful,
but that's another article.
2. Autoresponders - there are many free autoresponders
(getresponse, and freeautobot, just to name a few). Some
are better than others but they are a useful tool.
3. EBooks - You can get free ebooks just about anywhere.
These can prove very valuable as giveaways to get people
to do some sort of action,like join your mailing list.
4. Web Space - Free web space abounds throughout the internet.
Most likely, the ISP you signed up with offers web space
for free for you to put up your own personal web site. You
can also get free space at places like Yahoo Geocities,
Tripod, Bravenet, plus tons of others.
And the list goes on. However, today I would like to talk
about Web Space. Free Or Not Free, It's Your Choice.
Many home business entrepreneurs, when first starting out,
want to keep expenses to a minimum (I did this myself).
Therefore, just after we join one or two affiliate programs
and find out that we can't get the affiliate web page into
the search engines (because there are probably 5 million
affiliates with exactly the same page) we want to build
our own site.
Having your own web site is probably one of the most important
steps you can take to get your home business off to a fast
start. Taking the time to find a good web host should be
equally as important.
Read that last line again.
Why do I say that? Just think about this.
You have just spent the past two months learning html or
how to use a program like FontPage to build your web site.
You've been writing your web pages, putting in images and
links to your affiliate web page and maybe even have made
a few forms to get people to sign up for your own newsletter.
All is well and good so far, because it's still on your
computer.
So now you go to find a place that will 'host' your site.
And, being the money conscious person that you are, you
look for some place free. Your internet service provider
will give you probably 5 megs of space but will only let
you put up a personal site.
So you decide to give another place a try. Bingo, you've
found lots of places that will let you have space on their
servers for free as long as they can put a banner ad on
your web pages. A small price to pay you say and go ahead
and sign up.
Great, now you have your own web site up and running, it's
a little slow loading because of the banner ad but you decide
that is OK. Now, in order to get your site closer to the
top of your category in the search engines you decide to
start doing link exchanges. Very good, it shows you have
been doing your homework.
Now it's 4 or 5 months later and your site is on page 5
of the search results, people are joining your downline
and signing up for your newsletter. What a wonderful thing
this internet is.
One day you decide to log into your hosting account and
change a few things on your site. But, what's up, you can't
log in. You then decide to go to the search engine and type
in the url of your site. Nothing! Error, the page you are
looking for is not available!!!
Just like that, it's all gone. All your hard work, your
only means of getting affiliate signups and newsletter opt-ins
has disappeared. What's up you ask your web host and they
tell you that they have changed their policy and no longer
offer free web space. You're back to square one.
Think it can't happen? Think again. It happened to me.
That's right, all my web pages, articles, newsletter archives,
classified ads, everything gone. And, to make things worse,
I have been making changes to the site at the control panel
of the web host and therefore didn't even have a recent
copy of most of the pages on my computer. We live and learn!
Had I known all along how inexpensive it is to get good
web hosting service I would never have gone the free route.
To make a long story short, for less than $5.00 per month
you can get excellent web hosting services.
I won't make that mistake again, will you?
Back tips Page
|
