Free domain name and hosting for $6/year no banner.

[aspwebserver]

Hello dear hosters,

I was wondering how much interest would you show about having a free domain name like something.com or something.net which comes with $6/year hosting account. Also there will be no banners on such a plan.

The hosting plan should be comparabe to $4/month hosting package by other good hosts, we will charge only $6/year, thats a big price cut with latest control panel like plesk or cpanel. It should be good for personal or business hosting. It should support all the regular stuff like php, asp, asp.net etc.

What do you people think about such a hosting package ? Would there be a great interest about such a package in the market ? :-)

[DanTheMan]

um....is this a web hosting request?

[Richard]

No. He's asking a question.

No, it would not be a good idea, considering the domain should be $6/year, how would you make money? If you are charging $6 per year and giving a free domain ($6/year), that leaves you with $0/year from each client, how are you going to pay for all the support you need to provide to them? How are you going to pay for the hosting to host them on?

[MyHoZt]

I think that the domain might cost him 5$ or maybe less
how could you manage to sell hosting for 1$ ?
lets say you sold 1000 account @ 200 mb = 200,000 MB = 200 GB
this bring you 1000$ annually
which will never covor the server !!!
this if we assumed you sold 1000 account & not overselling
p.s. no one can oversell 200 mb !!

[aspwebserver]

Good point, actually the idea is to offer hosting and domain for $6 per year for first few years. Which is an awesome deal and we will bear the extra costs.

After that I plan to raise the price to $12 or $15/year, which will bring us some profit also. However the catch is that I will need more than 5000 cleints within few years to make this viable.

Is that possible in current market situation and at such prices. I know the price is awesome even if raised to $15/year, considering that we will offer space and features compareable to packages that sell for $5/month.

Any idea how I can attract that many clients ?

[impactgc]

Aspwebserver,

You may be the customer for the 2 years or so -- as long as the price is 6.00 per year with domain.. Once that price jumps-- so will some of the customers.
IMO.

So I wouldn't assume your customers will stay when the price increase comes into play.

Good luck with your plans.

Adam

[[DWH]Yuxuan]

aspwebserver, from a business perspective, it's not such a good idea. An experienced customer might accuse you of overselling, and an inexperienced one will probably leave right when the price increases.
Also, you are a business, trying to make money. How do you earn money when you make $0 profit?

Just my suggestions,
Yuxuan

[Meksilon]

Why not just sell for $15/yr now?

[aspwebserver]

Thanks for all your suggestions.

This is just an idea, not reality yet. Firstly, yes, some clients would leave when price jumps to $12, again many might not evey sign up for $6 thinking that is too low price.

However this is a high rush marketing plan. The idea is to gather thousands of clients within a short period with low prices. But then I have my own doubts if that would work. Remember www.namezeo.com, who was giving free domain names ? They did succeed, every one world wide knew when they started doing that in a year or so. Then they started chopping their clients with $35 price tag. Lol.

The problem with setting price tag to $15 right now is that, with that price i wont make much profit if i dont have a lot of clients. And on the other hand I wont have much marketing bucks with such low prices. So the only expectation is to gather thousands of clients with a good offer. I wonder what that might be. Any bright ideas ?

[MyHoZt]

you are asking the toghest question ever
the question you are asking is how to be a millioner in a year
with 1000 client
you will be the fastest growing webhosting company ever
and you are asking for more
when i started my buisness i was the happiest guy ever for having 10 client

[aspwebserver]

you are asking the toghest question ever
the question you are asking is how to be a millioner in a year
with 1000 client
you will be the fastest growing webhosting company ever
and you are asking for more
when i started my buisness i was the happiest guy ever for having 10 client

LOL, yes its a million bucks question. :ninja:

[Meksilon]

However this is a high rush marketing plan. The idea is to gather thousands of clients within a short period with low prices. But then I have my own doubts if that would work. Remember www.namezeo.com, who was giving free domain names ? They did succeed, every one world wide knew when they started doing that in a year or so. Then they started chopping their clients with $35 price tag. Lol.Yes, I remember because one of my "online friends" still has his domain with them (scurvyliver.com (http://whois.webhosting.info/scurvyliver.com)). I might add that you miss-typed the name in (it's not namezeo.com, it's namezero.com (http://www.namezero.com/index.php)). They don't, and never have charged $35/yr - they charge $19.95/yr. He's been too lazy to move over to another recommended registrar, which essentially means he knows there are lower priced registrars but is happy with the service he receives.
The problem with setting price tag to $15 right now is that, with that price i wont make much profit if i dont have a lot of clients. And on the other hand I wont have much marketing bucks with such low prices. So the only expectation is to gather thousands of clients with a good offer. I wonder what that might be. Any bright ideas ?What you're proposing is nothing like NameZero. They would register your domain for free in their name (a different friend of mine "Joseph" once had plamdi.com under them - as you can see here (http://web.archive.org/web/20010420182306/http://plamdi.com/)) - and after 1 year they would then register the domain in their name (for the following year), and sell it to you for $15. The wholesale price, as we know, was $6/name, so they made $3 profit in the first two years on every domain name they sold. In 2001 I, and Joseph were like 17 going on 18, we weren't about to buy domain names. I had 3 domains registered for free from NameZero and their sister-site at one point. I know lots of people who also registered domain names through them, and never paid for the domain - Steve (scurvyliver.com) is the only one who did! And all he uses it for is email and url forwarding! His email address is, and always has been stingray_1981 at hotmail, LOL!

No, I think it took a lot longer then 2 or 3 years before NameZero became profitable! :beer:

[aspwebserver]

Alright i had a name zero domain in my name too. Then i waited few years when they wanted money, at last it was released and i registered it for 8 bucks!

Anyway Now I have a better Idea. I will register names for free, yea free .com .net .org name registration. Then I will also offer top notch business grade hosting with cpanel, also free. In return I will ask for my ad to be place on the website. Would that work! If i ask you, would you move yoru site and domain to me ? Respond please!

[Armed]

Alright i had a name zero domain in my name too. Then i waited few years when they wanted money, at last it was released and i registered it for 8 bucks!

Anyway Now I have a better Idea. I will register names for free, yea free .com .net .org name registration. Then I will also offer top notch business grade hosting with cpanel, also free. In return I will ask for my ad to be place on the website. Would that work! If i ask you, would you move yoru site and domain to me ? Respond please!

The only problem with that plan once again is. If you're offering the service completely Free, then you have to absorb the costs of each domain name that registers, and you have to absorb the server costs as well. at $5 - $6 a domain, that's going to add up quickly. Especially since all the leads from the Link backs will be expecting the same COMPLETELY FREE deal. Then when you finally start charging, you're going to have a lot of people jump ship on you, and you'll be stuck with a lot of debt.

[aspwebserver]

The only problem with that plan once again is. If you're offering the service completely Free, then you have to absorb the costs of each domain name that registers, and you have to absorb the server costs as well. at $5 - $6 a domain, that's going to add up quickly. Especially since all the leads from the Link backs will be expecting the same COMPLETELY FREE deal. Then when you finally start charging, you're going to have a lot of people jump ship on you, and you'll be stuck with a lot of debt.

Good point but on the new package idea that I am suggesting now, I wont ever change anything for domain name registration and business grade hosting that will come with it.

So my annual expenses will be like $20 per website.

In return a I will place a small ad on the clients website and expect a limited number of page views from that daily. Not much but not too little either. The problem is that lot of small biz and info websites have hundreds of page views daily but most dont get any visitors at all.

I wonder if this will work. :idea:

Now If I ask you, would you move your hosting with me and put my small ad on your website to get free domain and hosting ?

[Armed]

Good point but on the new package idea that I am suggesting now, I wont ever change anything for domain name registration and business grade hosting that will come with it.

So my annual expenses will be like $20 per website.

In return a I will place a small ad on the clients website and expect a limited number of page views from that daily. Not much but not too little either. The problem is that lot of small biz and info websites have hundreds of page views daily but most dont get any visitors at all.

I wonder if this will work. :idea:

Now If I ask you, would you move your hosting with me and put my small ad on your website to get free domain and hosting ?

Considering you're only hosting 200 MB of space. If I've already got my domain, and my space, which is most likely more than 200MB, I don't really have a reason to switch, unless my host really sucks. People like reliability, if they see that their host is reliable and free hosts tend to not have a history of being reliable, and why would I want to switch from an ad free site to have to put a link-back to you're site on mine? But I'm curious to see what others think about this idea. I just personally think it won't work to well.

Now you say it will cost you roughly $20 annually per account. That cost adds up VERY quickly. Also are you on a Reseller, VPS, or Dedicated? If you're on like one of those "Unlimited Reseller" accounts found on E-Bay for $9.95/mo you are defiantly going to have reliability issues, as your reseller will find reasons to shut down your account, when you start using up a nice chunk of space and bandwidth.

[aspwebserver]

Considering you're only hosting 200 MB of space. If I've already got my domain, and my space, which is most likely more than 200MB, I don't really have a reason to switch, unless my host really sucks. People like reliability, if they see that their host is reliable and free hosts tend to not have a history of being reliable, and why would I want to switch from an ad free site to have to put a link-back to you're site on mine? But I'm curious to see what others think about this idea. I just personally think it won't work to well.

Now you say it will cost you roughly $20 annually per account. That cost adds up VERY quickly. Also are you on a Reseller, VPS, or Dedicated? If you're on like one of those "Unlimited Reseller" accounts found on E-Bay for $9.95/mo you are defiantly going to have reliability issues, as your reseller will find reasons to shut down your account, when you start using up a nice chunk of space and bandwidth.

Thanks for your comments.

You or any client should move your domain registry and hosting to me as it would save you $50 to $100 per year. Disk space or bandwidh is never an issue, most websites dont use much anyway.

We were a pro hosting biz, so our hosting platform would be rock solid and comparable to the top hosters. So our offer would be a very reliable solution and from our point of view its not free, the cost would be paid by the ads. Only the client will get if free.

And finally if this plan really becomes successful some day then lot of piad hosts would have some thing to worry about.

[Armed]

Thanks for your comments.

You or any client should move your domain registry and hosting to me as it would save you $50 to $100 per year. Disk space or bandwidh is never an issue, most websites dont use much anyway.

We were a pro hosting biz, so our hosting platform would be rock solid and comparable to the top hosters. So our offer would be a very reliable solution and from our point of view its not free, the cost would be paid by the ads. Only the client will get if free.

And finally if this plan really becomes successful some day then lot of piad hosts would have some thing to worry about.

Okay, well if you REALLY believe this will work for you. Then I say go for it, but I would get the opinion from some others here on the site, because I just really don't see it working too well.