A Word About "Free" Web Hosting
Services... Beware!
A surefire way to kill your online presence
is cutting corners by using free hosting services like GeoCities,
Tripod, and XOOM. They place so many obstacles in front of
potential fans that you may never sell a single album from
your site. Here are four major reasons to avoid using free
web sites:
1. Annoying Pop-up Banner Ads.
Non-fee based web providers use the word
"FREE" to attract customers, but they display ads
that pop up all over your "free" site when fans
visit! Plus, they try to offer you more products and services
through a barrage of email marketing andonline surveys. Pop-up
ads do nothing more than say that you are a tightwad and don't
take your music seriously.
2. They are slow.
Free web sites are not optimized to transmit
multimedia files and can add unnecessary download time to
your site's content. Most visitors will abort their visit
to a web site if nothing comes up within the first 9 seconds.
A slow web site also means your audio will be "dropping
out" or skipping like a scratched CD.
3. The address is too long.
With web addresses becoming a familiar part
of the media landscape, it is unreasonable to expect fans
to remember web addresses like:
http://www.geocities.com/Music/Jojo/index.html
http://www.yourwebhostprovider.com/yourbandname
http://www.usacollegecampus.edu/~yourloginname
http://www.mp3.com/yourbandname
Try fitting any one of these on a business
card or T-shirt! A web address should be short and simple.
As mentioned earlier, your best bets are:
www.firstandlastname.com
- or -
www.bandname.com.
Notice there are no slashes(/), tildes(~),
or any other terms that have nothing to do with your band
name.
Please note that even with a free Web Host
Provider, you will still have to pay the $70 domain name registration
fee AND up to $30 to set up "forwarding" to your
"free" web site. What a waste of time and money!
Remember, it costs the same to have a virtual domain name
set up, whether you use a free or full-blown mega-bandwidth
web host provider! Plain and simple, invest in a virtual domain
name.
4. Search engines ignore them.
Due to the growth of the web in recent years,
search engines like, Yahoo!, Alta Vista, and Lycos have had
a very difficult time providing useful information to surfers.
In an effort to remedy this, most of the major search engines
have chosen to ignore free web sites entirely. This is
because free web sites are associated with "my pet cat"
sites, hobbies, and other amateur endeavors. This would explain
why your hard work in getting into search engines is not paying
off if you already have a site hosted by a free host provider.
To add insult to injury, the purveyors of
this plot are themselves providers of FREE Web Sites. Yahoo!
maintains GeoCities. Lycos owns Tripod and AngelFire. Ouch!
Additionally, free hosting services do not
have the capability to process web forms. These are the interactive
and "money making" parts of a site _ i.e. guest
books, sign-in pages, shopping carts, order forms, etc. This
will make it difficult to create a community feeling - more
on this later. Plus, email is not provided as part of the
service. Although you can get a free email account from the
many popular search engines, like Yahoo! and Microsoft Network,
you will start to spread yourself thin with a web address
dissimilar to your email address.
By using a free web site, you have very little
control over how fast you can grow your exposure, modify your
image, experiment with new technology, and test new marketing
ideas. Even if you are diligently promoting offline and online,
your efforts will be entirely in vain because your site will
not be able to handle the traffic. However, if you have absolutely
zero capital and free hosting services are the only way to
get started, you will have to build your online presence and
then move your site to a better host provider.
Final Thought: FREE is a Four-Letter Word...Sometimes
With the advent of FREE Web hosting services,
it has never been easier to gain an online presence. Anyone
with the smallest effort can now erect a web site. That is
why it is more important than ever for your site to stand
out among the masses and avoid the distractions caused by
having a FREE Web Host Provider.
In addition to annoying ads, speed deprivation
and an unoriginal domain name, a FREE web site guarantees
that you will be ignored by search engines and unheard by
fans. No matter how you slice it, you are loosing money if
your site is on a FREE provider. Don't waste any more of your
time with them if you are serious about your music career.
Finally, do not Band-Aid together a bunch
of free services like web hosting, email, and Meta Sites to
achieve an online presence. Instead, use them in conjunction
with an "official site" that has a personality of
its own. In order to have a successful web campaign, you need
to have complete control over a web site that has its own
virtual domain name on a standalone Web Host Provider. With
all of that in mind check Taco
Truffles Media. They have a unique set of tools that
are specially develped for Artists, (Gig Monitor, News Tool,
Contact Management and Live Statistics) with optimized web
hosting for multimedia files.
About the Author: John Dawes is an
independent Internet consultant and founder of MusicPromotion.net,
a company specializing in affordable web hosting and design for artists. He is
most known for his informative articles on Internet music promotion and is co-author
of international bestseller The
Complete Guide to Internet Promotion for Musicians, Artists & Songwriters,
with music industry guru Tim Sweeney.
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