Can a free hosting biz be profitable?

IT.com

Jason76

Member
Note, if you're using ads, then you would have a lot of small traffic websites or a few really large ones to pull a profit. What are the odds that would work? Also, if you're running an ad-free biz, then you'd have to be confident that enough of your customers would upgrade once their resources ran out. Again, what are the odds of success?
 
It could be if you play the right cards. It was much easier before, but nowadays it might be an issue. You would need to provide an excellent service at start and keep your up-time at max. If you are thinking about leaving it free for the eternity, I think you would quickly lose. The reasons why is quite simple. There are many great web hosting companies which offer many features, have been trusted for years and their services come at a really cheap price.
 
I think that it is possible to make money from a free hosting site. Like you mentioned with the ads, you can use those to make money that will add up. A lot of site do this.
 
Too many people block ads now, so I'm not sure that it would work. Lots of freebie hosting sites have come and gone over the years. When there's no longevity, it suggests to me that it's not a lucrative idea.
 
Too many people block ads now, so I'm not sure that it would work. Lots of freebie hosting sites have come and gone over the years. When there's no longevity, it suggests to me that it's not a lucrative idea.
I agree, Ad blockers are a nuisance when trying to profit off of ads. I know a lot of people have up notifications saying you need to turn off your ad blocker to view certain things on their site.
 
Hello, I have been doing this since 2007. So let me share some experiences:
1. Every average customer would find free hosting websites on google and then get it blocked/deleted due to inactivity(no logging into control panel every 7 days) or not doing 10 forum posting/month or some other silly rule they are new to/unaware of. There are also bottom links, ad blocks with which the customer is really helplessly angry at. No body would tolerate free house with ads plastered all over it which they dont have any control over type of ads shown to their visitors and then been asked to leave at end of 4 days due to some silly rule. The land loard/webhosting provider doesn't understand the effort the customer spent in working/customising on the house in the past 4 days and the emotional connect and hopes they had with it. On the reverse Adsense blocked many free hosting companies with excuses like it isnt 6 months old, there has been click fraud etc jokes.
2. Next time they will go and compare free hosting on directories like free-webhosts, top free/hosts etc
3. Now they get frustrated as they are spending more time on searching, changing and managing free hosting providers and free websites and they haven't got any business/sales so far over the last few months. They are also forced to compare worthless things like CGI ONLY VS PHP, CPANEL VS VISTAPANEL, WORDPRESS VS FLAT FILE HTML, THIS TEMPLATE VS THAT MOBILE DESIGN instead on focusing on the real thing.. the website itself. I did all that and now realize that you can build achieve any type of website without all of those and I CAN BET ON THAT.
4. They see BLOGGER, WIX, WEEBLY etc offering free hosting. They start getting confused.
4. BAM comes AWS, DROPBOX, GOOGLE CLOUD, etc. they all have ad-free free web hosting tiers. Customer doesn't know how to use these ? and their paid version pricing seems un-understable like $0.0001/hr for 0.5 cpu $0.0002/hr for 512 mb ram etc is the worst to understand.
5. Now comes time They Go ahead an build a mobile app for some payment to freelancers like me that they hope will increase sales. :)

(OPTIONAL) APART FROM THIS POST IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW PEOPLE COMPARE AND USE FREE HOSTS I HAVE AN OLD BUT VERY HELPFUL ARTICLE: http://ajorganized-blog.tumblr.com/post/32261098126/best-free-web-hosting-providers-list

Conclusion: They have wasted too much time in looking for and changing, managing free hosting provider. There has to be an end to all this. No body is thinking how to ease customers headache and think of the customers emotional connect with their first free website. No body is willing to make such cool UI that customer would like to stay with the same provider in future even for payment of few bucks for an upgrade. .......... but those who do get a hell lot of money. See the sales price of blogger, tumblr, etc. If you think small, you get smaller CENTS. If you think big.. you get bigger BUCKS!

IF YOU LIKED MY POST PLEASE ADD YOUR LIKE!
 
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