hi i'm interested in offering free webhosting for people
but i was wondering if anyone knew how people can afford to set it up with giving people free 50mb etc space thats a lot of webspace and bandwidth they can't all make it back on advertising can they as i've looked at some sites that offer this and they are pretty rubbish and don't seem to have many sponsors
can anyone enlighten me
thanks
dave

From what I understand, many hope to establish a pool of free clients from which they can draw paying customers.

They also try and finance it by selling advertising space on their sites but i think that it has pretty much stopped working and is why many hosts have gone out of business

century,

can you tell me which comapnies give 50mb free space.

thanks

Always read the fine print. Free hosts CAN safely give away 50 megs. they limit users to 500k files that can be a large amount sometimes(and for good reason, porn, Warez mainly). Then of course you have the bandwidth issue. the main people using up bandwidth and space are people storing images. Now most people are turned off right away because freehosts, almost all, disallow hotlinking, and for good reason again(just use bandwidth, no income). Now when it comes to people storing images, i have seen some CRAZY stuff. The most crazy was cutefeet.com(I might of mispelled the exact one). This was someone who posted pics of celeberties feet, then talked a little about it. but thats not ALL, they did movie reviews and based them on the feet.

i've given away a couple of free sites (site design & hosting) and just plain hosting to local charities / non-profits. In exchange for the service I ask that they provide a link or mention of my business on their site.

It's really a cheap way to get free centralized and targeted advertising, and in my case the local newspaper did a write up on about a non-profit that I give webspace to, and mentioned myself and my business several times.

-neil

They just don't.
And they die.

(What Neil mentions is a special case that _does_ work, though)

Most of the time they take a loss. Maybe it is owned by a paid webhosting company with the option to convert customers to pay.

advertising advertising advertising - especially for those that offer free subdomains to non-profit projects such as food or software.

I used to operate a free hosting service with a few associates of mine. We'd place advertising banners on each of the users homepages, this is how we earned our profits.

The operation certainly did not work out as we had hoped. In the end, we broke even.

The operation certainly did not work out as we had hoped. In the end, we broke even.

As far as free web hosts go, that sounds like a success story.

i make about 500% profit from free hosting
its worked out very well for me

i always laugh a people who think free unlimited hosting doesnt work
IT DOES!

Originally posted by Hey It's Me


As far as free web hosts go, that sounds like a success story.
:laugh: That's an outstanding success, IMO. :laugh:

Originally posted by Host Ultra
i make about 500% profit from free hosting
its worked out very well for me.
You mean, you make "500% profit" just from your free hosting?? Or are the costs of providing that free service absorbed in your paid accounts??
i always laugh a people who think free unlimited hosting doesnt work
IT DOES!
I :laugh: at people who think that anything "unlimited" is truthful, honest and scientifically possible. :D

As a long time freehosting consultant I've seen two different types of free hosts emerge for two very different reasosn.

The main reason for free hosting goes back to the early days of Geocities where the owner. D. Bohnett, put together a concept of giving something away to users to build a community in a time where there was none and the only people with a website were businesses or colleges. This was all back in 94 and as most of you know, the ad market was just taking off. Geocities, xoom and the few other companies who started free hosting did so to provide a desired service and were rewarded with high paying ads on their millions and millions of banners. Shortly after yahoo bought geocities for a around 4-5 billion (yes, thats billion with a b) the ad market started to decline and then fell sharply to reach the point it is at now.

During the 6 year period from the start to the crash tens of thousands of free hosts came around. Most used 3rd party programs and a single server. Some, like 50megs.com (later purchased by about.com) did very very well. Others grew a lot but suddenly disappeared as costs went up and money went down.

All in all, this type of hosting tried to make money on the traffic generated from free users. Until recently they didn’t sell much and really, banner ads were the means for all profit.

---
The second kind of host is the host that uses free services to bring people into their paid services. Some of these hosts come from the remnants the first hosts, companies who use to be ad driven but now try and profit with upgraded packages and bandwidth sales.

The other, newer generation of free hosts in this category also try and get people into paid hosting but for the most part they are paid hosts fir and free hosts second. Must of these hosts offer very basic accounts or very nice accounts with very little bandwidth.

As the ad market levels out it's clear that free hosts are the last banners to be bought or sold on the list and thus free hosts are trying to make money other ways. For some free hosting is a means to get more paid hosting people to trust and sue their service, for others, free hosting is their service and the simple upgrades they offer just help them keep it running.

Originally posted by Aussie Bob

You mean, you make "500% profit" just from your free hosting?? Or are the costs of providing that free service absorbed in your paid accounts??

I :laugh: at people who think that anything "unlimited" is truthful, honest and scientifically possible. :D

Yes just from the free hosting
its paid from popups

Originally posted by Host Ultra


Yes just from the free hosting
its paid from popups

What popup company are you using?

Originally posted by Skeptical


What popup company are you using?

www.adpowerzone.com and www.found404.com

Free hosting is a tough business.

Those that succeed, usually suceed very well.

Those that fail, usually fail miserably.

I run a free host. I'm still in business.

Like Ted has said (hi Ted), ads don't cut it anymore. The popups help somewhat, but the money to be made is in offering account upgrades and other services.

Brian