I have a free webs website for my refferal business. Does this hurt my crediblity should I get a paid web address?
It doesn't matter whether or not its a free website. What matters is how professional it looks, if you can get traffic to it, and how well the sales copy is written - these are all important factors to consider whether or not the website is free or you paid someone to do it for you.
I think it can matter, if one is raving about making money, but ultimately it comes down to what you are offering and respectable looking website. The bigger deal is to get a domain name and "mask" forward your domain so that you are branding your own domain. This way if/when you decide to get your own hosting which ever online marketing should do at some point, you just would need to change the forwarding domain and not go out and rebrand your domain.
I used a free weebly site for my furniture site simply because I needed a landing page as a window to my Ebay store and vice versa but then I started getting free seo traffic to it so I started beefing it up with more keywords, and making it a bit more professional and it is great - I sell just as much ( if not more!) furniture with my free website as a friend of mine does with his expensive 'professionally built' site.
I DID get a domain name though and forward it to my weebly site. So I guess it costs me a whopping $10 a year.
Having a own domain is best for any type of business.It creates more credibility to your visitors and readers.
All of your comments are really helpful thank you. I'm really trying to focus on the quality of my content to compensate for my lack of branding with my site. It is a work in progress...
If you are in MLM business, then it is better to have your own, unique website. The websites provided by MLM company look all the same. So all other members have the same website. It won't make you stand out and also most of these websites are rather poor quality.
Well... $10 for a domain for the year OR About $5 per month to get a free domain + monthly website hosting... Realistically... if you are not willing to cough up 5 bucks a month to have a decent site with your own domain and server you really aren't serious about your business. As Justine mentioned - most MLM companies use the same templates over and over so your website will just not stand out.
Free Web hosting is convenient but has its drawbacks. You need to consider: 1) You cannot use your own domain name, instead you have to use a name provided by your freehost. Is the domain name of your free webs hard to type, hard to remember, and not very professional? 2) The limitation compared to paid hosting - for example Is the quantity of email accounts & size of your mail box sufficient for you? Is the web space sufficient for you? 3) Are you allowed to participate in ad programs ? Is the ad revenue belongs to you ? Generally, free web hosting is best suited for small sites with low traffic, like personal sites.
As a newbie, i find the free sites to handy. At some point i spent so much time trying to build a website which i failed at dismally. I think a free website is a good thing when you are starting our as the only thing you need to worry about is drving traffic to the site.
mbasa: As a newbie, i find the free sites to handy. At some point i spent so much time trying to build a website which i failed at dismally. I think a free website is a good thing when you are starting our as the only thing you need to worry about is drving traffic to the site. Yes, definitely. Let's say you start with WP.com or Blogger, you can learn so much from configuring them and using afterwards. Later on making your on WP.org for example will be much easier for you. You can also transfer the content to your own domain and hosting when you are ready for such step. It is also possible to have your own domain redirecting to the .com address, that way you will hide usually long and not so nicely looking domain names.
Free websites are an ok thing to start with. As long as the site looks moderately professional and does not bombard the visitor with ads or big flashy banners then the only time people will judge your url (that's what would give away you have a free website) is when they click on it. I hate to say it, but I really do think people are more likely to click on links that has a paid domain name in it e.g. www.blahblah.com, instead of a free domain e.g www.blahblah.com/blahblah. So I would recommend perhaps starting off with a free domaina nd then investing in a paid one once you have started making some profit. Good luck
Set up your own website, in my opinion a self hosted blog using the wordpress platform is the best way to go. You'll get better results from the search engines, and it is fairly cheap.
A free website is a good place to start when you're starting out. The minute you start getting serious about your business, consider buying a domain name and host your contents at a reliable hosting company. It would be heart wrenching to find out if/when you can't access your site because you have violated their terms and conditions. Good Luck!
luxe nowadays you can build a good free website so i would not saythat it can hurt your business. what it may do however is that it can limit your posibilities to play with the website, but in the same time you can have control over it. so if your business can allow you to have a simple page, then i do not see any problem in having a free website
