FREE FREE FREE Website

Can someone PLEASE define the word FREE
As a Newbie I have been trying many different marketing systems being offered on the Web. Naturally I am attracted to things offerd for FREE as I learn all about Internet Marketing. But what is FREE? It seems to have taken on a totally different meaning on the Internet. I tried one recently that was "As Advertised on TV!" Let me say at the outset I am only writing about this one because I have tried it. There are many others I have looked at that are similiar. The product is well designed and has plenty of help and many features. There is definitely a FREE website in the offer and this is what attracted me. But I am concerned that this is one of several offers on the Web that is NOT FREE. Remember this is aimed at Newbies - we who do not know any better!

Highly Suggested - Again Recommended
Once you get into the Signup pages there is an "Important Message" which makes it obvious that you should really take the advice and go with the NOT FREE Pro Package. Now again I'm not saying this is wrong. But I am saying FREE it is not! We could say that this is normal marketing hype. But should we accept it? Let's see what happens as we signup for this FREE website.

A Lesson in Up-Sell Marketing
We are confronted with two options - The Basic package and the Pro Package. There is a world of difference. In fact there are seventeen additional benefits to taking the Pro Package vs. two benefits for the Basic Package. With the Basic Package you get a Web page installed on a sub-domain I assume - and that is all. There is no control panel to manage the site, no Google or Yahoo marketing options, no Mail List facility and no domain name. I doubt very much you could make money using the FREE site even if you were an Internet Marketing professional, which I am not.

Okay I'll take it -the Pro Package is the way to go!
So you naturally select the Pro Package because you want to make this work and it is highly recommended that you should take the Pro Package. The first thing is you have to sign up for your Pro Website. This will set you back $11.95 a month. You are also offered enhanced Web Stats for another $1.95 a month. Now you are in a "buying mode" so it seems reasonable to click on it too. Then you are asked to pay a year in advance - no problem. So now you have just spent $166.80 on what you thought was going to be a FREE Website. A short time later an email is received thanking you for your order for your "FREE" Website! Hmmmm.

And there is more
Along the way you are given the chance to sign up for Ewen Chia's for $19.97. I've found his stuff to be good, but this is a FREE site. Is this for your benefit or the Pro Marketers? Then again after the signup and before the control panel there is another Up-sell product being offered. Both of these products are adding to the costs of your FREE site.

Pro Website Look & Feel
The Pro Website is smart and well designed and it is obvious time and effort has gone into making it and the tools to manage it, easy to use. But remember this is the Pro Package, it is not FREE. You just paid a one year up front fee of $166.80 for the website.

Now We have to Market our new Website
The Getting Started Guide is well laid out and full of helpful information. It takes you through signing up with ClickBank and some basic site settings. But it is in the Marketing section where it gets interesting for me. The trick to get instant visitors to your site is to sign up for a Yahoo Pay-Per-Click Account. The advice is to set your bids to between $.045 and $2.00 and to budget for $25.00 per day. That is $750.00 per month! This is my second problem with this FREE website offer. As a Newbie I don't feel comfortable spending $750.00 per month on something I do not know much about? If you want to make a lot of money they suggest $100.00 per day - $3,000.00 per month. Surely this has to be beyond the reach of the very people attracted by the FREE site promotion?

No experience necessary
This is also a concern to me. I signed up with Yahoo and I did put up some adverts and budgeted $25.00 per day on PPC advertising before I pulled the plug after about a week. Maybe I chickened out, but all I saw was a hole with money being thrown down it. I believe you do need to know what you are doing with PPC advertising when you are spending $25.00 to $100.00 a day on it. So experience is necessary and Newbies should not be doing it.

Now here is an idea
I now know you can get Reseller Accounts for Web Hosting and as such you can sell your very own Web hosting service. There are also Virtual Private Servers packages that allow you to host unlimited domain names for $50.00 per month. The added benefit is you don't manage the Servers yourself - your service provider does all of this work. Now let's take a look at the numbers. I sign up for a VPS account. I then put together a promotion for a FREE website but highly suggest a Pro Package that include guess what - a Domain Name hosted on my VPS Servers for $11.95 per month. I also offer a well designed web site and control panel package with lots of help too. By my reckoning I've only got to sell 5 to break even each month. But I'm also getting the whole years payment up front. That's nice! Maybe I'm too cynical. You need to decide for yourself.

So what's my problem
I am concerned that it seems like anything goes. As millions of us Newbies head for the Internet we are going to be gobbled up by some of the Professional Marketers out there, just waiting for us. There has to be a better way. The people who market these "FREE" website are often leading Internet Marketer, and are very successful. So why not add value rather than take advantage of people who do not know any better?

So who am I to criticise
I'm a nobody - just a Newbie that has spent a few months on the Internet looking around and trying things. Signing up for various membership sites and training program. Also buying software and trying it. Returning some software that did not suit my purpose too. For the record, I have not earned any money from my web Internet Marketing efforts yet. So maybe you should not listen to me. Do I have the right then to write this stuff? I certainly believe I do. The more of us Newbies that do it the better. We have to get Marketers to lead the way and add real value when marketing to us Newbies and not just add another income stream for themselves. They can still make money off us provided they give us real value and they'll probably make a lot more. I don't mind paying for value.

Postscript
I applied for a refund in the first 30 days and I have received it, less $21.95 for the cost of the Domain Name Registration.

Let me know how you are going with your "FREE" Website if you have one? You can leave a comment on this blog-

David Bates is building an Internet Business. As his knowledge grows he finds himself going in many directions. Hopefully eventually in the right direction. Along the way he will publish his experiences and his notes on his first site as a record for others to use if they wish. He purchases everything he writes about on his site and tries it out. Go visit his site at