Free websites? looking for own domain name

My little "hobby" site ZooChat was idling along with not very much traffic. Then the UK discovered it and now it's generating nearly 200GB a month in traffic - mostly from the UK, with the US in second spot and AU in 3rd producing < 10% of the traffic. Those poms love their zoos.

The site has a high multimedia content which is what is causing the high bandwidth usage.
 
RumpledElf said:
Eww. We were running at a constant 9-12G a month for aaaaaaaages but the last few months I've been promoting the sites a bit more and we're now on 17G a month and rising fast. I hope our host remains nice to us ... they're holding up to the extra traffic beautifully but we're still running very low traffic websites in the grand scheme of things. .
Click to expand...
I doubt you'll have that problem with a reputable and popular provider.
But most do now limit your resources by way of maxproc = 25 which may cause problems with many concurrent users on a site.

I put up an experimental site a couple of mth ago with only 7 pages and hardly any content, just a flash app test. Turns out Oct >2500 unique visitors and 1 gig of traffic, much of from Japan. :confused:
 
Thanks guys.

So heres my checklist before paying for and spending precious time I don't have on a service.

Quadra has easy to use and scroll through templates?
It will allow me to easily figure out how to set-up auto email responses?
It will take payments easy enough?

I have a few days off next week in which I plan to set-up my online business selling an ebook I wrote. I have not yet marketed it at all and will be very interesting to see what effects my campaign will bring.

Will post the site once its finished next week :)
 
Sim said:
My little "hobby" site ZooChat was idling along with not very much traffic. Then the UK discovered it and now it's generating nearly 200GB a month in traffic - mostly from the UK, with the US in second spot and AU in 3rd producing < 10% of the traffic. Those poms love their zoos.

The site has a high multimedia content which is what is causing the high bandwidth usage.
Click to expand...
That's what's saving us about now - the photodictionary hasn't been 'discovered' by anyone. Its been around about 3 months now and google only indexed it a few weeks ago. The site is like a wikipedia for people who don't want big words.

As to investor2009, I think you don't actually have a clue and want to just get website #43, click a few buttons and magically turn it into a slick e-book marketting website. You need to know what you're doing first. Is this going to be a blog site or just 1 page with a "BUY ME" button in the middle?

You need to sit down, design exactly what you want, and find out if any templates or open source ecommerce things will do what you want. But with most of these things, they don't 'just work' in 5 seconds unless you are doing something incredibly simple. With one product you can use the buttons paypal lets you make yourself and some of the paypal API to download an e-book for you. You can buy scripts for < $50 that will do all the work for you, if you have the time and knowhow you can write your own.

If you're just selling an e-book maybe you should use a site that does nothing but sell e-books and list yours on there?

What do you mean by 'auto email response'? It is very easy to set up mailing whatsits in php but that's pretty vague. You mean mailing lists or something emailing you when you have a sale?
 
I am also on the side of hosting in the US. I have a number of domains and they are all hosted in the States. Mainly for price, features and bandwidth. In my experience, none of the Aussie hosters stack up for what you can get in the States.

FWIW - i also host a few .com.au sites in the states too.

If you are considering a US based hoster though - i strongly recommend to stay away from a company with a 6 letter name that starts with G. It is a 2 syllable word and ends with BAT.

Stay away from them as they are crooks. It took me ages to get off their scam and i even had to cancel my credit card as they kept wanting to charge me more and more (without my consent). I sent them so many chargebacks but they still tried to charge me. So stay away from them.

Even now, they are still sending me emails telling me that they will upgrade my acount to add extra features and will take the money from my credit card (which is now non existant). They are just scammers.



g
 
Oh, and do you already have your domain?

If you've only got 1 day to do it, better register it now - and remember that when you point your nameservers at a new host, sometimes it can take up to 48 hours for it all to work correctly. Sometimes you get lucky and it takes 2, but there's no guarantees.

I did http://wordsbycat.com in a day, although I had it registered a week in advance. Cost $5 to set up the hosting, the morning to theme and organise the site and the afternoon to throw in some content. Its cute, pointless, and I should really advertise it more :)
 
gg1965 said:
Mainly for price, features and bandwidth. In my experience, none of the Aussie hosters stack up for what you can get in the States.
Click to expand...

Definetly not if your providing a fast service for a big number of locals.

investor2009
All I can say is that it may be better to find a site that you like selling a similar item, then pay someone to build one just like it. It should not cost more than a couple hundred $ and save you endless hassles.

But as RE stated, if you think your just going to put up a site and sell lots of ebooks, I doubt it's going to happen.

RumpledElf said:
Its been around about 3 months now and google only indexed it a few weeks ago. The site is like a wikipedia for people who don't want big words.
Click to expand...
That sounds odd, I think it's ages after a week.
Not telling you how to suck eggs, but your serving some godawful adds to your visitors.
 
RumpledElf said:
and remember that when you point your nameservers at a new host, sometimes it can take up to 48 hours for it all to work correctly. Sometimes you get lucky and it takes 2, but there's no guarantees.
Click to expand...
Actually name server changes should be almost instant these days with most registers. What happens though is most people visit the site just before they change name servers and it is cached by the ISP. So the trick is to not test your site out at least 10 minutes before you change name servers and I find that as soon as I have done the change I can jump on the site and see it using the new host right away.
 
It's just whoever is paying the most at the time.
You can pick which ads you don't want though.
Adwords generally give a couple $ per 1000 visits.
Maybe some rotating clickbank products may do better.
But you gotta get that bikini gurl (lol) off there imo.
 
Is anyone going to help me here, or just beat around the bush.. ? :rolleyes:
To be honest I don't think anything anyones said so far has helped me whatsoever!

It just has to be simple, where I can learn to use the site, and add bits n pieces over time. I'm not starting Microsoft..

Now again: Is there a site that anybody knows of that will allow me to get started on my own website relatively quickly, or should I just see someone who knows what they're doing? (pun intended) lol ;)
I don't want to hear "Ohhh don't bother, it won't work" I can get enough of that listening to my neighbours who sit at home all day on the dole. C'mon you lot!

Thank you :)
 
I want to fix my car. I turn the key and nothing happens.
I just want a car to do really basic things like go forward and occasionaly backwards.
I don't want to become a mechanic just to do some shopping.
I'm not starting up another General Motors either.
"Is anyone going to help me here, or just beat around the bush.."
Get my drift?

To sum up the replies:
Get a domain name
Get a decent host (wherever they may be)
Some hosts have templates that you may use to have a website up in a few hours.
Find a high traffic website that sells similar products, and do what they do or pay someone else to do it for you.
Sart with clickbank.
You can also use www.alexa.com to find out the highest traffic site.
 
Piston Broke said:
It's just whoever is paying the most at the time.
You can pick which ads you don't want though.
Adwords generally give a couple $ per 1000 visits.
Maybe some rotating clickbank products may do better.
But you gotta get that bikini gurl (lol) off there imo.
Click to expand...
She won't be the first weight loss advert I've removed ... I take off dating sites too, and insurance ads.
I'm currently getting around 0.3% click through but some days that translates to 20c, some days that is $20 ... CTR is higher on the photographic site but the traffic is lower, but per click it is higher. The more traffic you get the more the ads pay, which is nice. I have a lot of 'food' on the dictionary site so I'm really not surprised I get so many weight loss ads, but I'd infinitely prefer recipe sites. This whole making money off adverts lark is a work in progress ...

Now investor2009, come back to us with your nice new domain name and a basic website set up and we can pick it to pieces :p

Or pay someone $200 or something to do it for you, it'll be quicker. I assume you've already worked out all the text you want on the site, got some graphics you want to add, got an idea of what you want it to look like etc etc?

Nathan has a very pretty new website he got someone else to set up for him, if you don't know what you're doing it doesn't hurt to get experts in.
 
Good advice and great analogy, PB.
It's all about leveraging technology to work for you. Focus on what YOU do best and leverage the skills and facilities of others.
 
Cheers guys,

I've found a great forum for web designers,
Thanks for your contributions and, case closed :)

Will keep you up to date once the site is operating. It's a whole new ball-game for me, and I'm not expecting a full time business from it (as yet), was intending to try a round Australia marketing campaign for one weekend to sell my product, just a short money maker but as always I like to take things as they come and change my strategy with the changing times.

I really need an indicator on weather my product is going to sell well with proper marketing, and if there's a future for it, what sort of by-products I can create for the future, etc etc and this is where I've decided to start. If it sells really well that will give me the drive to spend more time on the business aspect but until then I'm not wasting my time studying web design.

And by the way PB if I want to replace a coil pak I don't have to go to school to become a mechanic.. I'd leverage my time elsewhere.
I know the basics and thats where I've decided to stay until such time I wish to move further up that particular avenue.

Thanks again everyone.
 
To the person who mentioned clickbank a while back - that looks like THE best way to market an e-book, hands down and then some. Seems much better than commission junction.

Just signed up and am busy having a good poke through what they list.

Would really, really recommend investor2009 joins up and sells through them, screw paypal.
 
sorry this may have already been said but any site can host a payment system - even blogs....just go to paypal and download a shopping cart..

I have a blog which is free and sell merchandise..

Investor - if you already knew about elance then there was no point looking any further - post the job and sit back and wait for the cheapest..
 
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