Although I have been in the hosting world since August 2004, I got started in free hosting in early 2006 (January or February? I can't even remember now!) with a free host running on the old Multihoster platform. (I still have a copy of this laying around if anyone wants it, btw.) All was good, and in just a couple of weeks, I had built up a huge (can't remember the exact number, but it was close to or over 1,000) memberbase. Things were going great, and that was awesome considering I had only promoted at one place, and didn't even know at the time that FWS existed. Besides that, the name of the host sucked (Q151), so things were really good. Then, one morning, I went to check the site and answer emails, and everything was gone - literally. All of the files were deleted, including the Website files and user files. There wasn't even a cool hacker greeting - just nothing. I was quite put out (as I am sure you can imagine), but rebuilt without trying to determine how someone could have gotten in and deleted everything (I never did claim to be very bright, now did I?
). The site ran again for a couple of days, garnering over 200 users again, and then was hacked again, with all user files deleted. The main page was messed up, too, but at least this time they left a cool hacker message.
I finally gave up, but not before trying one last time! I did go on to research the problem and discovered that it was caused by a MySQL injection attack. Of course, at the time I was too lazy/unskilled to go about fixing it, and to this day have not. (So if you take me up on my offer of Multihoster, just be sure you know how to secure it against an attack like this!)
I laid low for awhile, and then in December (or November - or something late in) 2006, I launched another free host, called FreewayWebhost. It still runs today (the new owner screwed up the homepage with his ads!
), and seems to do Ok. I didn't like the platform it was running on, though, so I sold it in March 2007.
Over the summer of 2007, I ran imgFX.info and something else whose name I cannot even remember now. These were just side projects in relation to much larger Websites I was running at the time, and I sold both of them as I got too busy to give them the proper amount of attention. (Plus, you can make good money selling good Websites.) The problem came around when the new owners did not properly manage the sites - both are gone today.
In June or July of 2007, I started freehosting300.com. It got up to 500 or so users, but I thought the name was stupid and too long, so I sold it for a pittance.
In August 2007, I launched freezoka. Many folks don't know this, but I did sell freezoka last month and made what I thought was a nice return on my investment, especially considering the ad income I received while I was running the site. Unfortunately, I do not think the owner has given the site the attention it needs, and I am hearing that it is falling apart.
(Of course, by now you can imagine that if I sell anymore Websites, I am going to choose the buyer - not let the buyer choose me!)
Also last month, I started a new free host called 40gigs.com. That is my current project, and I would like to grow it into something quite large. However, in the past week I have run into major trouble with the company we lease our servers from, which means I may have to move the site to a new provider. There is always some bit of drama in free hosting!
And, one last service I run is 07x.net. I started that earlier in the summer, just to use a domain I had laying around.
It has done surprisingly well for the very small amount of promotion I've done.
So, as you can see, this is my story in the free hosting world.
It might be interesting to some, confusing to others. I got started because I came across an open-source script, and continue to offer free hosting now because I like helping people out, I like the financial opportunity, and I really am a geek and just like Web hosting.
