Free Webhosts: Should You Still Care About Them? – Part 2

In the first part of this series, I talked about the disadvantages to hosting your site or blog for free. In case you think those statements were a bit too radical, let me confess one thing: I agree with you. I do believe that free webhosts aren’t necessarily the root of all evil.

Here are some reasons why free webhosts shouldn’t be totally ignored by webmasters and bloggers:

1. Free! Does that word ring a bell? We all know it does. Although one might say that all free things have little or no value, that’s not always the case. And let’s not forget that there are times in life when our financial issues are so serious that every single penny we can save makes a huge difference to us — or to our family. Besides, depending on the country you live in, paid webhosting may not be as affordable as it’s usually said to be.

2. Is it harder to make money from sites hosted for free? Probably. Is it impossible? Certainly not. There are still some advertisers who will want to buy ad spots and reviews from such sites. Affiliate marketing is another option to take into consideration, as well as certain pay-per-click programs (AdSense anyone?). Several bloggers and webmasters who use free webhosts are generating decent income from their pages. Some of them will even teach you how to achieve similar results.

3. Many of the complaints about free webhosting are made by people who are unable to follow rules. If you choose a free webhost that doesn’t allow adult content and still you insist in running an adult-oriented portal on their servers, you just aren’t entitled to whine when your site is deleted. It’s really that simple.

4. Unstable people shouldn’t spend their money with paid webhosting. Some individuals suddenly fall in love with a singer or band and proceed to create sites, blogs, photoblogs and forums devoted to their idols. A year later they realise that they couldn’t care less. And then they feel a bit ridiculous for having spent money for reasons that now they admit to be futile. If you recognised yourself in this description — replace “singer or band” by any subject that might inspire sudden yet temporary feelings in you –, free webhosting is the way to go.

5. Free webhosts are great for test sites. By the way, I’m going to post a whole series about test sites here. Subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now and you’ll have my new article series delivered to your favourite feed reader within the next weeks.

If you can think of yet more reasons why free webhosts aren’t that evil after all, please post them on the comment form.

In my next article I will give you some advice on when and how to choose a free webhost.

Karen Zara has been involved with Internet-based projects since 2002. She is the creator of Abaminds, a blog for content producers that you can visit by clicking here.