|
When was it, 6 or 7 years ago that freehosts first appeared? And almost immediately the common advice on the boards (rightly) was don't use them unless you had no choice or a very specific need. Traffic leaks and loss of traffic control were cited among the reasons.
Yet here we are now, content and hosting prices have never been lower, traffic is more valuable than ever, and people are signing up in droves for freebies from sponsors which have all the drawbacks of old-style free hosting.
That said, while I don't see anything wrong in principle with trying to get more out of sponsors, I suspect we are close to the point that them giving with one hand will mean taking back with the other, like the way banks provide free checking accounts by increasing other charges. The biggest sites may still have some wiggle room: the problem is that if smaller sites do not appear to offer as much to affiliates, few are willing to sell them.
And there is another way to look at this and related issues...
If there is any validity in the statement that many "pro" affiliates provide their own content, designs, hosting, etc, etc, then by extension, the primary beneficiaries of the sponsor-provided freebies are non-pros: webmasters who if not in this business just for the short-term (college kids etc), at least have only a short-term view. Which in turn means that far from helping pro webmasters, the most generous sponsors are helping create competition for them.
In other words, far from encouraging sponsors to give more away, it might be more sensible for pro webmasters to try to persuade them to do less.
|