When you start your free hosting business, the cash is always a constraint, at least for most people. As I mentioned in a previous post of Checklist for Free Hosting Providers, you need prepare sufficient cash for at least a few months. The budget limitation may force you to give up dedicated hosting and choose reseller hosting. Will this affect your business? Surely, but it depends on the hosting niche. Different free hosting or free services need different server resources.…
Starting the free service is easy, but making it profitable is difficult. As I mentioned in previous article, starting free WordPress hosting, or starting free web proxy, does not need any fancy scripts and tools. But how many people do make meaningful profit? Before you start to provide free web services, it is important to realize you have enough fund to pay your servers, your employees (if any) and yourself. Usually, it may take at least 3-6 months for you…
Got a server, but no idea on any niches? For many beginners, they want to start quickly to fully utilize the bandwidth. My suggestion is if you have idle resources, especially if you have lot of unused bandwidth, you may try free web proxy. Just after one week, you will be noticed the difference in bandwidth usage. Web proxy, refers to a type of proxy service through web servers. A client connects to the service provider's website (proxy server), then…
Forum, or BBS, looks a bit outdated when most people are talking about web2.0. But this is a wrong perception. Forum is still one of the most efficient ways for discussion. When the community is active and large, the manageable discussion can be easily achieved through forums. If you use social network, the discussion is unmanageable, and the discussion is fragmented. This is the reason why most active communities have one or more forums. For example, if you look at…
Free Joomla hosting was discussed in Joomla community quite often. Unfortunately, unlike WordPress MU, or WordPress 3, there are no good solutions to host multi-Joomlas with one installation, as I know. This means this can be a great opportunity for new start-ups on free hosting. Of course, it will need considerable cash investment. Recently, I had a phone chat with the owners of FreeJoomlas.com, which is currently the only free Joomla hosting provider using one installation. But they fail to…
You failed, frustrated, but still cannot figure out the reasons. Here I give you the answer. WordPress hosting is the most simple one among free hosting services: you just install WordPress, and enable network, as I mentioned in previous post (Providing free WordPress blog hosting, actually is so easy). Unfortunately, you cannot match your service with WordPress.com or Edublogs just in a few months. It take years to build a free and paid WordPress hosting services like them. To start,…
WordPress is unarguably the leader of blogging scripts. A lot of sites, including this site, is powered by WordPress. For the version 3.2 alone, it has been downloaded more than 6.3 million times when I write this blog. Version 3.0 had been downloaded over 32.5 million times by February 2011. If you are curious, you may check the live counter at WordPress Download Counter. WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool powered by PHP and MySQL. It…
WordPress is a great open source project for blogging and content management. Millions of users use it everyday. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a very commonly used feature among bloggers to broadcast latest posts and updates. Unfortunately, the default WordPress RSS does not include any media items. Some bloggers said the image URL will be included if you choose Full Text under Settings—Reading--For each article in a feed, show. Unfortunately this is not true for the default templates…
Maybe, every second, there is a new free hosting provider going online. But sadly, free hosting providers bite the dust at a similar speed. If the free hosting business had been planned well, the outcome should have been different. A sensible business plan is essential for a successful free hosting business. If you cannot see where your business will be in two years, you need do more home work before starting your business. Here is a check list of essentials…
Your grandma may tell you if it is too good to be true, it usually is. Yes, there is no free lunch in hosting industry. If the hosting is given to you freely, it just means the free hosting provider can get revenue from other sources. Currently, most free hosting providers generate revenue from two major sources: advertisement (third-party or own network) and upgrading. Advertisement can be from third party, for example, Google Adsense and some affiliate ads, or from…