First of all. You must know that parking your website at a free host is usually like building a house on sand. It may be quick and and it may seem easy at first, but I can almost guarantee you it won't last long. However, you can monetize the free website using Google Adsense, this will derive you some money just by putting up the contextual advertisements by Google on your website. You can earn real money when people clicked on the advertisements displayed on your website, which known as "CPC" (Click per count).
Disadvantages of free unlimited web hosting
- Limited web page space
- May not be free forever
- No branded emails addresses (you@yourdomain.com)
- Can't add interactive features (chat rooms, message boards, games, online ordering etc.)
- May have banners and/or pop ads on your homepage and/or all of your pages
- Your visitors may doubt your credibility
- Long and hard-to-remember web address (instead of yourdomain.com)
- No guarantees of site availability and longevity
- Poor help and support options (if any)
- Search engines often ignore them (Your traffic will be limited)
Advantages of Owning Your Own Dot Com Name
- No banners or popups
- Easier to get listed in search engines (Google, Yahoo etc.)
- You have more control over the look and feel of your website.
- Multiple branded email addresses (you@yourdomain.com)
- Plenty of web page space for site expansion
- No worries of site being removed unexpectedly
- Looks more professional
- More flexibility for design and functionality
- Help is readily available
- Easy to remember website address (yourdomain.com)
We all know that web hosting is fun especially when you are hosting for the very first time. I know what you might be thinking is that to get free unlimited web hosting!
If you are penniless and you wish to host a web, you really should try out the this. However, if you are serious to start up some real online business you should not try this. You should try this guide instead. For paid web hosting, the hosting fees are not very expensive and you can terminate your plan anytime.
List of free unlimited web hosting that I recommend
http://hosting.eu.pn
http://biz.ht
http://100webspace.com
http://byethost.com
http://biz.nf
http://freehostia.com
http://awardspace.com
I haven’t used any of the free hosts above, so if something happens to your site, it is your own responsibility. Personally, I have tried some of the free web hosts above and they are quite safe to use.
I am not sure if free hosts have fantastico, but if they don’t, it’s very easy to install wordpress.
If your site is going for worldwide, then .com or .net is the best. There are some others like co.cc and .info (which is from $0.9-$2.5, depending on the registrars). However, I strongly recommend you to go with the .com as I have read several other guides from different authors. All of them strongly recommended to go with the .com. One of the authors that I liked so much is "joel comm"(internet entrepreneur) he have written a few e-books, he also strongly pointed out that .com is still the best.
I would strongly recommend you to go with http://Blogger.com since it’s owned by Google.com, and is extremely easy to setup, and Google will help it rank (but not alone of course). I know of some of the people who went to Blogger.com to build a free blog only to have their blog shut down by Google because they violated the Google TOS. Please be careful and do not post things like pornography that may risk your blog to be removed by Google.
Another free and reliable host that I recommend that also gives you free unlimited web hosting and more features more blogger.
Wordpress
I have already mentioned the basics about Wordpress, now once you have installed it etc, here are good plugins to use.
Google Analyticor
Redirection
Google XML Sitemaps
All in one SEO
Sexy Bookmarks
Tweet This
Top Commentators Widget
Contact Form7
Akismet
SEO Friendly Images
WP Super Cache
WP Auto Tagger
Broken Link Checker Pro
WP-DB Manager
Permalink Redirect
Related Posts
Now it comes to the themes part, choosing your theme for Wordpress (The first thing to do after you registered a blog in wordpress.)
Here are a list of sites that have Free Premium themes(not all of them though) and free themes.
http://wordpressthemesbase.com
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes
http://freewordpressthemes.com
http://wptemplates.org
http://freewpthemes.net
http://wpskins.org
http://wpcorner.com
http://skinpress.com
Some themes don’t allow you to add a logo, you can just enter the site title and it will be shown as text, but some themes require you to add a logo, but no worries, there are plenty of free tools to make logos (online tools), and you can make your own if you are good at photoshop.
I know that I pinpointed at the free unlimited web hosting as a very bad choice! No, not at all ! If you got a good and reliable free website hosting just like the blogger, you can monetize your website using www.google.com/adsense/, becoming a Internet Publisher.
Good luck!
