Free Web Hosting? How do they turn a profit?

They try to sell higher paid hosting to current users. They also build their mailing list and send offers by emails.
rgds

Zm

Save your time Chris. I've tried it, spent a fortune on my free hosting service, it can not generate a sustainable income until you reach at least a couple of million users.

They are looking for "free stuff" in the first place, whatever you are trying to sell them, WILL NOT sell, unless it is free.

They will not even respond to any kind of advertisements, even when it matches with their personality and interests. Not if it is required for them to pay something.

The only way to monetize is from advertising to the public, not to the members. So if you place Google AdSense account on your member's site, you will have a chance.

Otherwise, it is a dead end, never hope that your "free" members to cough up any payments whatsoever.

Not to mention all the porn sites and illegal hack sites that are signing up just to abuse the service.

I've been trying to make sense of doing free hosting since 1999, but after a decade, I am sure it is impossible to monetize, unless, as I said, you put advertisements on the members pages and got at least a couple of million members.

Hope that shed some light.

Thanks jrianto, that was the major problem I was considering. I would imagine that most of the customers are just freeloaders and not likely to spend any real money.

But I still have hopes that there is some way to creatively monetize the mass amounts of possible customers that free hosting can generate.

Hope you don't mind but I might shoot you a PM to discuss this with you a little more if you have some free time...

Thanks,

Chris

PM away Chris

-Jimmy

Its basically a way to get users to sign up for a list in order to promote premium services.

But you can't usually sell stuff to people are looking for free.

Thanks for your replies guys!

So after reading these posts and talking with Jimmy (jrianto) it seems that the general consensus is that the "normal" methods of monetization (adsense, banners, promos, etc.) do diddly squat for generating sales from the "freeloaders" free hosting generally pulls in.

So out of all the warriors here...no one has any unique, creative ideas to monetize free hosting? (besides the obvious methods stated in first post)

I mean...these are still real humans with real needs that DO spend money in some way or another that are signing up, right? Or am I missing something more important?

Maybe it's impossible to make any real money with a free hosting site...maybe not. I think with some input form more warriors and some out-of-the-box thinking something might pop up. I don't care if you think your ideas are silly...I genuinely want to hear what you think might work.

Thanks!

Chris

jrianto, that's a revelation. I would guess so. People who want free webhosting only want freebies.

But I have seen some huge free webhosting services do that to build a network of websites for Adsense income and to sell those text links in the footers. I wonder how profitable it is for them.

A good idea would be offer a small amount of space/bandwidth and then offer users an upgrade for a fee when they need more space beyond your FREE package.. I have seen this method used several times.