What Do You Need to Start?

If you are new to the idea of making money online, then you have probably read a bunch of posts from other bloggers that state that in order to ‘make it’, you need to host your own sites.  And many have some pretty compelling arguments to this.  These same people almost always manage to drop the name (with affiliate link) of their host just in case the person reading their rant decides to purchase hosting.

But this author has to ask…..

Is purchasing hosting really necessary?  I mean, really?

The answer is NO!  Of course not.  Paid Hosting or Free Hosting….it doesn’t really matter in the beginning.

Actually, it doesn’t really matter in the end as well.  I have a buddy who makes a six figure income from blogspot blogs.  Not bad considering his only overhead is building a link profile.

Look, the reality is that most people who are serious about creating websites will eventually move on to hosting.  But to tell the truth, it isn’t really necessary.  There are plenty of parasite sites like blogspot or wordpress (the free hosted one) or Squidoo which will serve the broke marketer just as well as someone purchasing a domain and hosting it themselves.

In fact, I actually recommend that if you don’t have any experience with building sites, to learn how to do it on a free hosted blog before you move onto having to maintain things on your own.

There are some pros and cons to choosing a free host though:

1. You don’t actually own the site-  The site owns the site…consider yourself a gainful employee that can be fired at any time.  The site could theoretically (although it rarely happens) just up and delete your account.  If they do that, then all that content you spent hours building will be gone in a heartbeat.
2. Unlimited niches (kind of)- One advantage of building on parasite blogs is that you can build a ton of niche sites very quickly.  Got an idea and want to test the waters before committing?  Try it out on a free hosted blog to see if the traffic is really there.
3. It looks unprofessional-  Well, this could be the case if you are gunning for readers.  After all, a lot of bloggers view a free hosted blog a lot like a red headed step child….they will continue to go there if the content is good but won’t like it.  It just feels like wrong and bloggers, as a rule, are pretty snotty (just kidding).  If you are just keyword sniping for something that will get organic traffic, then you will be fine.
4. There are some things you can’t do with a free hosted site-  If you have ever tried wordpress, you will know what I am talking about….blogspot is a lot more lenient but still, if you want to silo out your site or add a database, then you will be out of luck.  You will need to host it yourself.

All this said, if you are into niche marketing and creating loads of mini-sites using web 2.0 properties and other free hosted website platforms and have little to no money starting out, then using these free hosted options out there will get the ball rolling.  And the reality is that after over a decade of marketing and several thousand “free hosted” properties later, that you can make money online.

Next Article: Content Creation- How to create a ton of content for your websites…

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