"Do you really need
to have your own domain name?" The answer is "YES!".
If you upload your site to a free web hosting service,
the only company who benefits is that free web hosting company
- why else do they want you to host with them! The last
person who benefits is you. There are a several
reasons why having your own domain name is a necessity if
you want to succeed!
When you have your own domain name, the address of your
web site will be of the form www.yourdomainname.com.
If your site is on a free server, your website address will
be something similar to www.afreehostcompany.com/yoursite.
Which of these two reflect a professional business?
Wonder what address your visitors/customers are going to
remember?
When you have purchased
your domain name, you can have multiple email aliases
support@yourdomainname.com or sales@yourdomainname.com.
By having specific email addresses for different departments
it makes it easier for emails to be directed to those areas
it is being address to & it has the bonus of giving
the illusion to your customers {if it isn't} that yours
is a large, established company with whom it is safe to
do business.
If people can't find your site just think of the amount of
traffic that you will lose!
Search engines give a lot of importance to the home page
of your domain.
This means that a home page of your domain will often
rank higher for a particular keyword than any other
page on your site.
So when you use a free hosting service, your index.html
page is the home page of your site, but not of the
domain.
Therefore your site will find it very difficult to make
it to the top 20 or so, certainly not the top 10!
Some search engines refuse to spider web sites which are
hosted by free web hosts. Worse still, you will find it
very difficult to get it listed in a major directory like
Yahoo! (Although Yahoo will never admit that it won't add
a commercial site which is hosted by one of the free web
hosts) It will be a miracle if you can get your site listed
by Yahoo! Listing your site with Yahoo! is difficult enough
even when you have your own domain. Don't make your task
more difficult than what it needs to be.
The secret to making money with your website is to create
a reliable & creditable website for your customers.
Buying your own domain name is the first step towards this
goal & makes your customers feel that they are dealing
with an established business, rather than some cheap backyard
operator.
