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| | A free web hosting service is a website hosting service that is free (without money), usually advertisement-supported. Free web hosts will usually provide a subdomain (yoursite.example.com) or a directory (www.example.com/~yourname). In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a second-level domain along with the hosting (www.yourname.com). Many free hosts do allow use of separately-purchased domains.
Profiting from free webhosting
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The majority of the hosting companies use free hosting to introduce their services, and as an entry point to their more expensive offerings. Generally they recoup their costs in one of a few ways:
* Resell Hosting - This is where someone starts up a hosting company, attracts lots of visitors, then sells the hosting company to someone else once it can no longer support itself. Once sold, this individual uses the money to start up multiple hosting ventures and sells each in turn.
* Referrals - Using a simple form of viral marketing, these providers rely on the users to spread the offer. The ratio of free to paid accounts is known, and by having each free user refer a number of friends, the hosting provider is able to get enough paid accounts to cover the cost.
* Advertising - Selling online advertising on the customer sites is generally considered a fair trade - the reasoning is that high traffic sites are more expensive to host, but the additional traffic allows for additional ad impressions therefore covering the cost. For the web master, it can be a good trade if the advertising is of good quality and non-competitive. This is one of the main reasons that businesses do not use free hosting for their website. The majority of free hosting companies use this method.
Some hosting companies are using hybrid approaches that mix these tactics.
Methods of giving out web hosting
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A few methods of giving out Free Web hosting to people by Webhosts:
* Post for Hosting
Some free hosts require posting in a forum. Forum-based free hosting requires users to either reach a certain amount of posts before getting a free hosting account, or be an active contributor in the forum. Forum-based free hosting often work on a system of points where posts give points to a user and can be used as credits toward getting a hosting account or more resources. Typically, the forum where users have to post contains advertising as the hosts way of making a profit.
* Instant Activation
Due to the risks of illegal, inappropriate, and abusive website, hosts with instant activation usually give very little storage space and monthly bandwidth. Other restrictions will likely also be in effect. The webhosts usually either require the users' web pages to display their banner ads, textlink ads, or popups; or else the users' files to be uploaded through a web-based file manager that display ads to the user uploading files.
Hosts with instant activation are often abused, such as link spamming.
* Forum applications
This method is popular, as the hosts can decide which applications to deny and allow. This is common when a popular forum has free hosting as an add-on service, rather than the other way around.
* File hosting on webhosts
Most free web hosts discourage using their services for file or image hosting only, with no web page, since advertising is displayed on the web page. Because of this, hotlinking is usually disallowed on free hosts. Some free webhosts will also disallow files over a certain size (for example, 5 MB). However, there are free file hosting services which allow large files as well as hotlinking.
* Co-branding and resellers
Some services offer co-branding services. These let you brand fixed plans with your own company. Other services, offer WHM or panel reselling. This allows the client to develop his or her own web hosting plans and business. |
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| | | gratis, no ads, without money, no payment |
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| News or Articles | mentioning Free |
| The Planet Offers Free Bandwidth - The company includes 10TB of free bandwidth on dedicated servers.The Planet, a privately held dedicated hosting company, today announced a limited-time offer that includes 10TB of bandwidth at no additional cost on new dedicated server orders. The company states that the promotion, which ends on April 30, 2010, applies to servers hosted in the company's enterprise-class Houston and Dallas data centers, and includes premium bandwidth from Tier 1 providers. It adds that customers ...
Free Email with Every Domain and cPanel now Available at LogicBoxes - Company launches cPanel for Linux Hosting and offers a free 1 GB email account with every domain name.LogicBoxes, a software and consultancy company dedicated to web service companies, has announced that it has upped its value proposition to all registrars on its platform with the introduction of a free 1 GB email account with every domain name and the launch of cPanel for Linux hosting. The free 1GB email account with every domain purchase extends the list of LogicBoxes free ...
ResellerClub Launches Free Email with Every Domain - The company adds Free Email to its existing suite of Free Services.ResellerClub, one of the largest web services providers in the world, announced the launch of a free email account with every Domain sold. This new free service comes as an addition to their existing suite of free services which include DNS services, Domain Forwarding, Mail Forwarding etc."The Free Email Account with every Domain is a basic service which will allow our Resellers to set up their ...
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