I run a freehost and was wanting to make a plan that is attractive to freehost users. As with the nature of the users - very few want to pay for anything. Any idea what would be a good plan that might actually convert them from using freehosts to an actual paid hosting plans?

JDT

you mean other than the tried and true obtrusive forced advertising and annoying other features? I guess probably the best I can think of is what Geocities and NameZero does, offer more services, friendlier URLs and less or no advertising. If you already do not have advertising or allow domain names for URLs, I guess you could try more space, more bandwidth and more emails as value added offers - or change the free offer to include ads, and less space/bandwidth. When people are getting something for nothing, it's always difficult to upsell. ;-)

I don't know what your goal is here, but you sound more like a missionary wanting to convert the heathens to Christianity. Godspeed to you.

"Free" customers and paying customers are two different animals. It is very difficult to sell something to someone who has the mindset that something should not have to be paid for, especially when they're already getting that something and not paying for it.

The only plan that is attractive to a user of a "free" host is. . . well. . . more free hosting.

That's not always true...but don't expect a big conversion rate. You CAN turn free customers into paying customers (look at NetZero, geocities et al)....it's difficult, and a pain in the butt to give them compelling reasons to switch, you'll probably hear all kinds of complaining... Have you thought of other ways to earn income from your free people?....Maybe find a helpdesk capable of taking calls, and charging for support (like 900# support for instance)?

Just some thoughts ;-)

Cheers, and Good Luck!
B

Look at the yahoo email business plan. You now must pay for POP3 access.

Or look at PayPal, everyone started using them, and once they had become "the" standard, so to speak, they said OK, now everyone give us your money.