Okay, so you’re in the affiliate marketing business, one of the first things you need to consider is your hosting. Once you’ve planned out the site, bought the domain name and have some content ready for it. Now is the time to get that site on the Internet, for which you need a hosting account. So you do some searching on Google to check out the cost of hosting with different web hosts, but suddenly you notice an obscure link on the search page that is advertising “Free Hosting”!
What? Is there such a thing as free hosting? I mean can I really host my site for free?
Short answer: Yes, you can.
Long answer: Yes, you can but like with all things free, it comes with a lot of catches. So do explore whether you want to go the free route or pay for hosting your site. Let’s look at a few pros and cons of each.
Free Hosting
Pros:
- Well, it’s free.
- On some hosting platforms, you don’t even need to pay for the domain name because they give you a sub-domain.
Cons:
- On most free hosts, your domain will appear as yoursitename.freehost.com. Not good for a professional site as visitors will not take such a domain seriously.
- Your web host will most likely insert banner ads and popups inside your pages. Which means readers on your site will get distracted by other ads and promotions.
- Don’t expect regular upgrades to the web tools you use inside your free hosting account.
- Technical support will be minimal for you, as their staff would be busy catering to their paid clients.
- Extremely low amount of bandwidth allowed, which is okay if you have a small personal site to show it to your friends and family. But if you plan to run an online business on it, forget it.
- There could be a possibility of the host suddenly ceasing their free service, and asking you to sign up for their paid hosting or shift your site elsewhere. Expect to lose a lot of traffic if you move to another host.
Let’s see paid hosting now. We’ll start with its disadvantages first as they are far and few.
Cons:
- It costs money, both to buy a domain and the hosting itself.
Pros:
- You get to project a brandable name with a TLD of your choice for your site.
- Most Paid hosting companies feature round the clock technical support in the form of Live Chat and Phone.
- You also get much more bandwidth and hard disk space compared to free hosting, so you can add more web pages and domains without worrying about exhausting your hosting resources.
- As long as you adhere to their Terms of Service, you can put any content on your web pages without any intrusive ads from your host.
- You can easily move from one host to another with no loss in traffic.
- Your host will make regular backups of your data and will provide better security to your site.
So think carefully about the kind of hosting you want for your site. And always read the Terms of Service of your host to ensure you comply with them.
