I am still amazed at how some people seem to think there is really such a thing as a free ride. In the event of a free ride what do they really think they are going to get for nothing? Everything, and I mean everything, has a cost whether directly or indirectly.
On many of our websites we offer live chat support services as a courtesy to our visitors and as a way of providing customer service. We have a website that offers a free professional quality website, free domain name, free email and free shopping cart for the low price of monthly hosting called Website Made Simple.
Recently we had a visitor land on the site from a google search where they had inputted “free website and free domain name” into the search bar. (Our web analytics shows us the referring search used to find us). Now our site is very clearly laid out as to what we are offering and right up front it clearly states that we ARE offering a free professional quality website and domain name, amongst other things. I mention this because of the question asked when the visitor utilized our live support feature. They clicked the live support and their question was “Where can I get a free website with a free domain name?” Duh…
So then we explained nicely that our service offered those features for the low price of monthly hosting. They were insistent on knowing where they could get it for free. There is no such thing as free.
First of all it costs every domain registrar real money to reserve a domain name. Not to mention any resources to provide a free website. The only way that anyone can afford to give this out for free is to receive something in exchange. Personally I don’t know of any systems offering a free domain name with a website but there are plenty that offer a free sub domain with a website. And the cost is that for one you don’t have your own domain name and two there will be some sort of advertising on your site because thats how it gets paid for. Note the key words, paid for, ie, not really free just someone else is paying for it. Of course, you pay for it to in the lack of professionalism it implies. And if their are any systems offering the free domain name you can bet they have some method to make it up meaning they are going to charge you something, somewhere in exchange for the “free” service.
Everything has a price. The best thing a person can do is simply shop around for the best deal as there are some great deals on the Internet for domain names, hosting and websites. We even offer our customers if they purchase a domain name from us a ton of free services such as hosting, a starter web page, website builder, a blog, free email account.
