Capital Hosting

The prospect of creating my very own website for free was quite alluring. My first attempt at it was disastrous at best; it drained a great deal of my time and resources which can never be recovered. My inexperience and lack of understanding how the web works, was clearly "Blind Ambition." I learned a lot of things the hard way. For those who are starting a business, or considering trying to create a website that has the potential of generating any income, a free website is probably not a good choice.

While trying to create my first website, I learned quickly that a free site didn't include many of the things that I needed to succeed in my online business. The web service, that I initially chose, gave me very restricted ability, and severely reduced the ability of my site to do anything that I needed to be successful. I was given one website with 15 pages maximum, free hosting, 20mb of storage capacity, 1gb bandwidth. Also I had no domain of my own. In addition, I could not post any ads on my site. On top of it all, I had no customer service when I needed any help. The website was a complete failure, and I lost well over 100 working hours that I invested into this project.

After completing some research, I discovered that most web services, which host free sites, will provide every limited bandwidth and storage. This greatly impacts on the amount and type of content, as well as the data capability that your site has. It is important to note that, every service I looked up did not let you have your own domain, and your website was simply a sub domain of the service provider. In addition many required you to have your site branded with the web service company's information on the footer of each page. None of them allowed ads and monetizing the site is near impossible. On several reputable service providers that advertised offering a free website, I found the following limitations:

• Bandwidth of 1gb t o 5gb monthly. The highest bandwidth I found was 10 GB for a free site.
• Storage limitations on files were normally between 10 to 20mb.
• No Domain.
• Page limitations between 5 pages and 15 pages.
• No Pay Pal Commerce allowed.
• No Google AdSense allowed.
• Web footer posted on every page of the free site.
• Web service provider's address in your website's HTML.
• No customer service.

The low cost options were not much better than the free site offers with many of the service providers that I investigated. The bandwidth and storage limitations were increased, but only by a small margin. The number of pages included in the package had also improved and most included customer support. But the other limitations were still a huge factor, including not having a dedicated domain.

There are ways to create your own website without any money out of pocket, or with very little money up front. Some of the best providers will offer a 30 day free trial or a reduced introductory rate. The free trial time period can allow for sufficient time to have the site set up, and generating a sufficient income to pay the service provider before the trial time is up.

This option works out pretty well, but only through dedication and hard work to get the site published quickly. Having the benefit of the service provider's site building tools and a full business package capability, along with customer support, will help to get the site running quickly. The rest of the time spent will be to improve SEO and advertising the new website in order to generate enough income to cover the cost of the site. Free ads like Craig's List and other online advertising work out well to start with, but will only generate just enough to keep the site operating. It will be tough for the first few months until the site has steady traffic. SEO will be your next hurdle. We will discuss that another time.

Donald L. St.Pierre invites you to learn more about creating your own website at http://www.rsireal.com. There you will learn step by step how he created his own website without any cash. For more free information go to http://www.rsireal.com.