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The concept
Many people starting their first site are on a tight budget, and being new aren't likely to have
many, or indeed any, visitors. Paying for hosting is either impractical or impossible for
these people as they would be unlikely to get much of that money back again as revenue.
Thus, the free host was born.
The payment
The way these hosts usually recover the costs of the services they provide is through
advertising. Many companies are willing to pay to have their advertising banners displayed on
other sites.
It's actually a very good deal for everyone concerned when you think about it. The host
can provide free services to users, users can build sites without monetary outlay and commercial
sites get additional visitors. It also means there are many more sites on the Internet than
there would otherwise be.
So, everyone is happy, right?
Wrong.
The avoidance
Some site owners think that banners "spoil" a site, that they "mess up their design". They
go out of their way to avoid displaying the banners.
Some surfers feel the same way and surf with images disabled, or use some sort of "banner
killer" software.
What they don't think about is that the banners pay for the services they use.
Try and imagine what sort of place the Internet would be if only commercial sites were
available. If every site owner had to pay for hosting in some monetary fashion, then they
would have to charge their visitors in some way.
Banner free hosts
If you've read the TNSTAAFL page then you should appreciate that
running a hosting service is very expensive.
If a host offers free services without an obvious means of paying for them, you should be very
wary of signing up with them. Without adequate funding the service will be unreliable and is
not likely to last for any reasonable amount of time.
Those that do last eventually resort to adding banners to their hosted sites - often without
warning or consultation.
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