Do I need a domain name?

Will free hosting be enough for a business

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thanks for answering my previous question.

Can you tell me if a free website will provide as much success in selling products online? In other words, do you need to purchase hosting and a domain name?

Can you please give some advice?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards

[mack]

Hi Andrea,

In theory you can get by using free hosting and a free url from a free hosting provider, although it looks a lot more profesional if you have a propper domain name for your company or website.

It is also very often a lot easier to remember a true domain as oposed to a rather long domain extension from a free provider.

Free space providers are good for playing around and experimenting, but when it comes to doing business a true domain should be the order of the day.

Mack.

[PatrickDeese]

I would strongly recommend not using a free host solution.

Hosting is very cheap, you can get fairly decent hosting as low as $50 per year.

I would never break out my credit card to buy something from a site hosted on geocities or the like.

[robfs]

I agree, a domain name about $10-12 per year, hosting $5.95-10.95 per month. For about $98 - $150 per year (only about $35 upfront costs, the rest is monthly bill) you can have your own website--$98 for basic or up to $150 for all the bells and whistles (choice of installed carts, chat, forums, etc.) Plus you have total control of everything on your website, no data limits shutting your site down for a day, no pain in the butt pop-ups (unless you put them there).

If you get a lot of visitors right now, you probably have lost more $ in sales already from people coming and not thinking your site is very professional or possibly even legit.

just my two cents,
Rob

PS- I've been with my host for 2 years and have 2 accounts with them. If you want their name just email me.

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thanks for replying. I agree that it would be better to have a paid website but can you tell me if free websites get ranked in the search engines?

Regards

[bakedjake]

can you tell me if free websites get ranked in the search engines

They sure do.

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thanks for replying. Can you tell me therefore if it would be a reasonable good place to start a home based business with a free website?

Would a free domain name do?

Or would I be better of with a free website and my own domain name?

Regards

[PatrickDeese]

I didn't go into this before, but free hosting sites have a history of changing URLs for all their advertisers and having restrictions that may not seem to matter today but might be very restrictive a year from now - stuff like no CGI Bin support, no php support etc.

If you don't think the business is worth risking $60 on, well maybe you should rethink it altogether.

[Rosalind]

Many free hosts have TOS that forbid commercial sites, so look out for that. You're also looking at possibly a lot of downtime, bandwidth restrictions and general unreliability. That will reflect badly on your business, in the same way as the url of a free hosting provider will. Don't do it!

[woop01]

If you’re going into business with the mindset of reducing costs rather than increasing net profit, you are going to have some problems regardless of what you decide on the domain name.

In terms of total cost, a domain name/web hosting should not be something that is skimped on.

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thanks for your advice.

How would you promote other people's products without a website, apart from posting articles and so on?

Would it be wise to start an ezine without a website?

Or should I wait until I have a website to do that?

I'm trying to prove that I can start earning some money from affiliate programmes. I suppose the other option is compile a free ebook with links in it.

Can you think of any other form of free advertising without a website?

Regards

[Andrea]

Hi,

You know if you use free webspace and a free domain name. Is it possible to later change the domain name on that site to a paid one, even though it's free webspace? For example, I could use bravenet.com free web space and have a free domain. Then, I could continue to use the free webspace with a paid domain name. Is this possible? If so, how do you go about changing to a paid domain without disrupting your website? I want to start an online business, that involves selling other people's products. At the same time I will be learning web design.

I look forward to hearing from you,

[netguy]

Andrea, if you go with a free hosting service that simply provides you a URL address based on their domain, you can't transfer it. In such a case, any traffic you build up, will go away when you leave them and go with your own domain/hosting.

Also keep in mind there is never a 'free ride.' In addition to the domain considerations, many freebies require obnoxious advertising that will degrade an otherwise nice website.

There are many domain registration and hosting firms that provide combined domain registration and very low cost hosting to get you started. I've seen some as low as about $10 bucks a month.

The important thing is make sure you have a domain that is registered in your own name. That way you can transfer it to any host (later on) without losing traffic and regular visitors.

Steve

[Andrea]

Hi netguy,

Thanks for your advice. So, you're saying that even if I use free webspace, I should at least get my own domain name?

Regards

[guitaristinus]

Don't even bother with the free space. It will only cost you $5.95/month for 100 megabytes of space and 100 meg/day bandwidth at pair.com. Register domain at godaddy.com for $8.70/year or less. It's a little complicated at first, but after you get the hang of it, it's kind of fun.

[netguy]

Andrea, having your own domain name registered is like having a permanent house address. With it, you will be able to build up your online site that - as it grows - people will always be able to find you - even if you change hosts later. Without it, it is like living in your car... nobody ever will know where your parked. ;)

If you can find a low-cost hosting/domain package (as long as they allow domain registration in 'your' name), then go that way. Otherwise, find a cheap registrar and for $10/yr get your own domain then shop for a free/low-cost hosting deal to tie your domain to.

Steve

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thanks for replying. I have been looking for some domain names and wonder if it's allright to choose ones that end in .org or .net, and so on. The .com ones appear to have been bought. What do you think?

Also,when people are doing searches. Is it the domain name that the search engines go by when tracking down websites or is it the website text?

I appreciate your advice.

Regards

[netguy]

Andrea, there are literally 'millions' of available .com domains available for virtually every industry you can imagine. Just be creative and put your thinking cap on. Look at the suffix of a few hundred domains (including this one), and add it to your industry or a name you like. You'll find several in a hurry.

A .com domain is what people think of most often when typing in a name, and if you go with a .net or .org, many looking for you may end up going to the owner of the .com instead.

As far as the search engines, while the site content (and proper SEO) is often more important than the domain name alone, you need to look beyond the search engines and have a consistent domain where your visitors can always find you.

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thanks for replying. Can you tell me how people get those google ads boxes placed on the right hand side of their websites. Do you have to pay to have those on your site and how do people make money from showing them?

Regards

[woop01]

Andrea, go to [google.com ] to find out the details on those Google boxes. There's also a forum dedicated completely to those advertisements on this site.