Well off the start the obvious benefit is that it does not cost anything...at
least there are no direct costs for the site.
Anglefire
GeoCities
Many
other sites!
Since they are providing you a free service they either
show ads to you or your website visitors. Many of the ads they show
new webmasters offer them "deals" which are exceptionally
worthless. Search engine submission software, for example, is worthless.
The internet is a fast marketing medium. Its one where multiplicity
is quick and simple. Spam penalties mean nothing to people sneaking
a quick buck here and there. They build a junk site, exchange links
with anyone, spam whoever they want, look for rankings, when they are
gone...so is the investment, which was essentially nothing.
That may be true, but many people judge a book by its cover. Where
the real issue of a free hosted website comes into play is when you
need to build the popularity of that site.
Despite what anyone may say, it is extremely hard to build a website
popularity using only search engine optimization and page copy. Internet
spiders are somewhat stupid. It is hard for them to tell spam from good
content.
Search engines use feedback from other websites to
determine which sites offer good information. In many search engines
it is more important what others say about you than what you say about
yourself. According to Google President Bush is both
Both of these rankings should do a good job to show the power of linking
and link text. Very few people were involved in these rankings, yet
they have garnered national media recognition.
Since the marketing cost is essentially zero many scumbags
create dirtball sites which clutter search engine results and offer
little to no quality content. To avoid the hassle of worrying about
these sites many directories and websites will not list free hosted
sites. Without these links it is hard to obtain much traffic since the
sites will not list well in search engine results.
In addition to the fact that Google recently was
not able to spider Lycos AngleFire websites, Lycos is to close down
many
of its free options. You can buy hosting for as little as a few
bucks a month, which will save you much more in the long run.
Free hosted sites may do well for a hobby site or to
supplement your income, but I recommend using paid hosting on your main
site if you want to earn a living off the internet. If you limit your
distribution you will never know how good you might have done.
