A Small Question

SlimSlyk · 06-15-2006, 11:27 AM

I come from a world where there was no "Host for Post!". The facts were that you had banner ads, popups, and sometimes even those annoying little scrolling ads on the page. The challenge was to find the host who had the least annoying ads.

Now, you have all of these hosts who give out hosting for posting on their forums! Granted, there are a few that are neat, but I have never seen any last very long. Is it too much to ask to have a banner on the top of the page? I mean, honestly, you're pretty much guaranteeing your stay at that host just by showing that. Let's say that minimum, in 1 000 visits, the host makes $0.05. It probably didn't cost them a single cent's worth of bandwidth in those 1 000 visitors.

That's profit. Most people like profit. By making it so you post on a set of forums, depending on how it is set up, you are probably losing out on a lot of the profit and will end up in debt in the end. Note, I said, depending on how it is set up. Even if you are forefeiting 1 000 impressions from different people for 500 from one person, that is half as much, and some companies won't pay for more than one unique impression per hour.

Thoughts on this anybody? Basically all of these people are giving up profits to "gain an edge" on the market. I haven't seen very many horribly successful post-for-host operations out there, and I honestly don't think we will.

Note that the post isn't meant to bash everybody doing this, it's just a thought on the forefeiture of profits and the possibility of debt in order to gain an edge over the free hosting market. It would be so much better on both ends of the deal if people just put ads.

Don't even get me started on people who host for a textlink.

Bondings · 06-19-2006, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlimSlyk

Thoughts on this anybody? Basically all of these people are giving up profits to "gain an edge" on the market. I haven't seen very many horribly successful post-for-host operations out there, and I honestly don't think we will.

Are you sure about that? Maybe you just never found the good ones?

Do you really think a big standard banner on top of each website/page is acceptible for a more professional website?

Quote:

Don't even get me started on people who host for a textlink.

Theoretically this would be possible to sustain if you only pick very high quality websites. A lot of (big) paid webhosts host popular forums/websites for free in exchange for the "sponsored/hosted by" link. But in practice you are right for the majority of the cases.

ephekt · 06-19-2006, 01:26 PM

Well in my experience, so far there is a company out on the market to beat my offer and we still stick with banners. However, we offer the user multiple array of banners and upon custom requests we can work with the customer depending on what they are looking to do. But really for us, we offer the client billing, hosting, and services that you would pay for - so we have no trouble running banners (and we do not even force them).

The forum posting I personally do not understand. Just because that IS not professional in itself. A company sending a rep to post b/s on a forum seems a little sketchy.

Bondings · 06-19-2006, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ephekt

The forum posting I personally do not understand. Just because that IS not professional in itself. A company sending a rep to post b/s on a forum seems a little sketchy.

I suppose you never actually visited and/or used a similar service?

What exactly is not professional about a forum offering completely free hosting as a additional service to its members? Hosting with complete freedom, including giving them the opportunity to place their own ads on their websites, exactly the same as on a paid host?

And about the b/s posts, that rather depends on the forum staff/rules. You might be surprised if you compare some of those forums with the quality of the 'average' internet forums.

ephekt · 06-19-2006, 04:08 PM

I have never been a hosted account on a post for host system. I have run a post 4 host system however.

I think you missed the point of professionalism that i was referring to. A company offering software development that is a fortune 500 - can we quality this as a professional firm? - if so, could you imagine them using a post 4 host service? If so, they would have to send a representative to your forum monthly to post on random topics in return for hosting. I do not think ad-supported hosting is fully professional either, but it is a closer attempt to the goal than forum posting.

There are ups and downs to all services in the free industry, this was my opinion and you can take it as it is - i do not plan to reply again to this thread as im not interested in arguing, debating, or casually chatting about the topic anymore. thanks for your time.

Bondings · 08:25 PM

Ah you meant hosting professional websites, like fortune 500 companies? Of course that's not going to happen, but neither with an ad-supported host. That's a completely different market/section. I don't even want to host such websites.

I don't agree with the fact that you need to provide services to professional companies to provide a professional service/to be called professional.

Take Gmail. Even though in beta, we can both agree that it is a professional service (unless you have a different opinion). However it doesn't provide services to fortune 500 companies, maybe their employies, exactly like those employies also may use a "post-for-host".

I also don't really like the name/classification of "post-for-host". It seems to imply that people are solely posting to get hosting, which isn't the case. The target audience are people who enjoy (or will enjoy) posting on forums and sharing thoughts with other users. The services (=hosting in this case) the forum offers to active members is there to attract (and also keep) the members on the forum in question instead of another one.

So this means that the average "post-for-host" doesn't have the intention to host very big websites and certainly not the websites of complete companies. It is rather personal and oriented towards the community. This of course doesn't mean we aren't able to provide more than decent features to the users. (and those wanting more bandwidth/space are usually abusing the services provided anyway)

And with the original "more professional website", I meant a regular medium website, like most websites on the internet.

SlimSlyk · 06-20-2006, 08:18 AM

Why is a more professional site using free web hosting anyways? Anything more than of "small gaming clan" importance isn't exactly something I would use with a free web hosting service.

Some people might be interested in actually participating actively on the forums, but more or less, at the prospect of anything "free", you will get far more people just participating to get free hosting.

DKM Hosting · 06-20-2006, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bondings

Do you really think a big standard banner on top of each website/page is acceptible for a more professional website?

Do you really think a professional website should be looking into free hosting?

Bondings · 05:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DKM Hosting

Do you really think a professional website should be looking into free hosting?

It all depends what you define as professional. And I wrote "more professional" and not "professional". That makes a big difference.

TwisTed · 07-12-2006, 02:36 PM

I agree with bondings on this issue,main reason for the posting on forums to gain free hosting is to build a community in itself,i have seen free hosting companies in the past that make more money then paid hosting companies,i mean you get a community started with 50k + members on the forums your liable to make some pretty good cash just off the ads on your forums,i dont think people really mind posting on forums for hosting wether it be a one time deal or a way to charge people for their hosting with points..from my expierence most people dont really enjoy ads all over their page if they arent the ones making money from it..just my opinion though.I also think its good for your paid customers to..to see that you actually interact with your customers on forums rather by live support or ticket systems..its more appealing to them and makes them more comfortable when they know they have 6 or more people of staff on the forum for when they have a question they dont have to wait 8-24 hours for an answer its usually instantly..but once again in my expierence this hasnt never proved me wrong.