Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Starting up Free Web Hosting business..

[mike2010]

Hello, I've got a good, kick-butt linux server...root access along with the latest version of Plesk installed.

I'm thinking about starting up a Free Web Hosting company. I see a lot of articles about starting up a regular web hosting business...but not many or any about starting a Free Web Hosting business. (any good reads would be nice)

To cover costs, I figure i'd put a 728 x 90 leaderboard banner at the top of everybody's page. But not quite sure how to implement it script wise ? I'm not sure if Plesk has those features....maybe it's a separate banner script ?

But yeah, I still need to buy a domain as well.

Any help or tips is appreciated.. I figure going the free route would be less troublesome with tech support as well...as less premium services would be available.. And wouldn't have worry about money processing issues.

[SeriesN]

Freewht.com has all the discussion. Regarding ads, put ads and the users are gone.

[Mad_matt]

yeap you can make an absolute motza in free webhosting, here, take a look at the money this company is just raking in every month, after only 5 years of hard work:

https://flippa.com/2688400-free-web-...pr2-5-year-old

just think, in 5 years time of working hard and providing 24/7 support you too could be earning $33 per month.

/end sarcasm.

[Mark Muyskens]

Originally Posted by Mad_matt

yeap you can make an absolute motza in free webhosting, here, take a look at the money this company is just raking in every month, after only 5 years of hard work:

https://flippa.com/2688400-free-web-...pr2-5-year-old

just think, in 5 years time of working hard and providing 24/7 support you too could be earning $33 per month.

/end sarcasm.

Do you have a free host of your own? If not, you really don't have a reason to comment here.

One thing with free hosts, your results for income will vary, highly.

You mentioned wanting to do forced ads on users. You should check out mod_layout as this would be a good route;

http://www.musc.edu/webserver/mod_layout.html#_1_1

You can always hit me up via PM if you have any specific questions. I'd be happy to help.

[NexDog]

Originally Posted by Mad_matt

yeap you can make an absolute motza in free webhosting, here, take a look at the money this company is just raking in every month, after only 5 years of hard work:

https://flippa.com/2688400-free-web-...pr2-5-year-old

just think, in 5 years time of working hard and providing 24/7 support you too could be earning $33 per month.

/end sarcasm.

Was funny though.

We used to run a free hosting server. A separate piece of software ran it and placed a banner at the end of every page.

The site was a magnet for pornsters. They'd upload hundreds of images and link to them on their pornster forums. So we disabled hotlinking server wide.

Then we found a bunch of child porn sites on the server. Very distressing.

At this point we stopped the auto-creation of accounts and made people request an account via a section on our main host's forum.

Final straw was when the server had issues and we got a bunch of "SERVER DOWN" threads on the forum that made it look like the main service was bad when it wasn't.

Just a lot of hassle for no money. Banned by Adwords pretty quickly. No SEO value passed on to our other sites. Maybe 1-2 users converted to paid hosting. Bad experience, would never try it again.

[Mad_matt]

yes i still provide free hosting, however i dont allow new signups and just keep hosting those that signed up earlier. I wasnt after a money grab, but rather was doing it for the experience prior to launching a professional company -> and oddly enough im STILL too inexperienced to really be trusted as a competent host.

i somehow managed to attract everyone that wanted to breach copy-write laws, and the other half of the clients were all from iran / iraq -> which are the nightmare clients that a cpannel host tries to avoid, then lets not mention the sites that got me in some hot water over excess spamming....

the very few clients that were in between the TOS breakers and the US banned cpannel users can be summed up in this picture:
http://photohost.info/images/613FF19...xpectation.jpg

@MM, I know what i said in my earlier post might have been slightly over the top, but i was hoping that it would encourage the op to rethink his strategy, look at what others are doing. Flippa is the only place where you can see the site AND find out just how many visitors, and just how profitable it is for them. Clearly that site i linked to IS NOT a good role model, but there are others there that the op can look at, see what each is doing, how profitable it is and hopefully they will have a better chance of success then they otherwise would.

[Cloudstra]

3 words: Don't Do It

[gaboman]

Originally Posted by Mad_matt

yeap you can make an absolute motza in free webhosting, here, take a look at the money this company is just raking in every month, after only 5 years of hard work:

https://flippa.com/2688400-free-web-...pr2-5-year-old

just think, in 5 years time of working hard and providing 24/7 support you too could be earning $33 per month.

/end sarcasm.

Definitely head erased any ideas on a free hosting company

[mike2010]

Originally Posted by Mad_matt

yeap you can make an absolute motza in free webhosting, here, take a look at the money this company is just raking in every month, after only 5 years of hard work:

https://flippa.com/2688400-free-web-...pr2-5-year-old

just think, in 5 years time of working hard and providing 24/7 support you too could be earning $33 per month.

/end sarcasm.

The guy on that link never mentions why he didn't use Adsense Ads. Chitika = pennies ....tried them in the past = garbage.

Banned by Adwords pretty quickly.

You guys saying it's very easy to be banned quick by Google when running Free Hosting ? Any good precautions beforehand ?

Also on that link...how the heck did he get away with $47 a year hosting with that many customers ?

geez..I'm running unmanaged and still paying $1200 a year. ( Core i7 Quad Core I7-860 2.8GHz , 4GB SDRAM )

[SeriesN]

Byet reseller, free. He only paid 47 for his site hosted on separate server.

[SamBarrow]

It's actually very simple. Don't.

I'm running one now, but it's a hobby, cause I'm just a really nice guy. You're not going to make any money. The only way I'm able to break even is that I've been doing it for years and I've learned from every conceivable costly mistake. You will lose money, lots of it, before you get to that point.

If you express any more interest in starting a free hosting company, I will return to this thread and recount the horrors to you one by one.

[SeriesN]

Sam, I think it is time to let the world know what we face.

[SamBarrow]

Originally Posted by mike2010

Hello, I've got a good, kick-butt linux server...root access along with the latest version of Plesk installed.

And now you want to sacrifice it.

Originally Posted by mike2010

I'm thinking about starting up a Free Web Hosting company. I see a lot of articles about starting up a regular web hosting business...but not many or any about starting a Free Web Hosting business. (any good reads would be nice)

There's a reason for that.

Originally Posted by mike2010

To cover costs, I figure i'd put a 728 x 90 leaderboard banner at the top of everybody's page. But not quite sure how to implement it script wise ? I'm not sure if Plesk has those features....maybe it's a separate banner script ?

Custom apache module. But most free hosting companies these days offer ad-free, so you won't be competitive.

Originally Posted by mike2010

Any help or tips is appreciated.. I figure going the free route would be less troublesome with tech support as well...as less premium services would be available.. And wouldn't have worry about money processing issues.

My free hosting customers are more demanding and entitled than my dedicated server customers.

Originally Posted by mike2010

You guys saying it's very easy to be banned quick by Google when running Free Hosting ? Any good precautions beforehand ?

They will ban you because you don't own the sites. Not that it matters though, because even if they don't, 90% of your "clients" will be from third world countries where the ad clicks are worth absolutely nothing.

Originally Posted by SeriesN

Sam, I think it is time to let the world know what we face.

Alas, they could never understand.

[celthunder]

I ran a free shell server without really limiting what people could do on it for about a year. I learned a lot but it really wasn't worth it. Nobody thanks you, or even will want anything to do with you unless the server is down and most of the time that will be because people are busy doing there best to exploit it rather than being thankful and using it for a test environment. Right now I still do free hosting for a few people but they're all small businesses that aren't doing anything and realize I'm one person not making profit off of it so if it takes a day or so for me to return that phone call or email they don't complain about it too much. Just my experience.

[SeriesN]

Unless you have a full proof plan and tactics, do not even bother to offer free hosting. Free clients wants more, ask more and gives nothing . I have clients paying more then 2k month and never made a single demand.