Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Meaning of Sponsored:

[Xshare]

I think it means that you give a host ad space, but lucrative ad space, and must be a good site, or somewhere that will see MANY people. I so often see this word abused ot just me free hosting.

[anon-e-mouse]

It is just free hosting, but they are prepared to show your banner/text link. They want a paid hosting plan for next to nothing in other words

I guess they figure "sponsored" would have a more positive effect than "free"

[Lippy]

Seems there are alot of these requests lately. From my experiance and what my company has done is if you are a sponsored site your offered a lower payment for a specfic plan. Not all sponsored sites are free.

[OneStopHost]

Yup. I saw a request someone wanted someone else to buy them 8 Duel Xeon boxes with Ensim Pro from Rackshack and in return he may put a comment on how nice you are or something

LOL

[GideonX]

sponsored/free hosting is just silly in my opinion. most of the sites requesting this barely put out any significant traffic, waste of resources.

[CrazyTech]

I "sponsor" church websites and other non-proffit websites to help out, but in most cases I have found people do not use up anywhere near there resources they required, so if they are just taking up space I send them an email recommending a free host and explaining that we only "sponsor" popular websites, because it does cost us a bit to host them.

[Martie]

We sponsor but have a limit what we will do, and how long we will host a site (one year hosting) and its "usually" for sites that just cant pay or have special needs - case by case.
It could be additional discounts, or a custom plan, etc.

[jcwebii]

I find it can be beneficial to "sponsor" a non-profit site, this may mean offering a significant discount or perhaps even a little free resources to a small informative site.

You may be helping out a community service organization, and in exchange, you may often find that your link popularity is given a little boost from a simple little "site hosted by" link on each page, and also you can gain some nice referrals from friends of those organizations who are willing to invest in paid services. Whenever some of those organizations hold events to raise money or whatnot, they might even mention the host as a sponsor in advertisements - good publicity.

(It's also understandable that a profitable web host probably doesn't want to go wild handing out tons of free space to everyone who asks.)

[GideonX]

i can understand not for profit sites asking for hosting, but most of what i've seen are personal gaming/script testing sites. oh well.

[blue27]

You may be helping out a community service organization, and in exchange, you may often find that your link popularity is given a little boost from a simple little "site hosted by" link on each page, and also you can gain some nice referrals from friends of those organizations

This is the true nature of a sponsor.
Sponsorship in all forms is a type of advertising. It should be a win-win situation.
You sponsor someone and they get what they need, it may be cash, or product, or even web space and bandwidth, in return you receive a little PR and advertising.
All successful companies have an advertising budget and it isn't always tangible, ie. $200 to advertise in a periodical. Sometimes it's a donation or a sponsorship which contributes to a company's good will.