Maria Gudelis | As Seen on TV, Entrepreneur, Author, Marketing and Real Estate Expert

I’ll be starting a short 3 part series on marketing on the internet and you should be able to read these in less than three minutes…

Mistake Number 1

I feel these are the 3 worst marketing mistakes that people make. Trust me, there are a lot more than 3, but these 3 are at the very top of my list. This week I am going to start with cutting corners in web hosting and domains.

 Many people when they first start trying to make a living online immediately begin with the attitude that “I’m broke so I need free”

Well, guess what? That kind of thinking is going to keep you broke, especially when it comes to web hosting and domain names.

As you know, or probably don’t know, you can actually get your own web site without spending one dime on either web hosting OR a domain name. Absolutely. Just go to Yahoo and get one of those crappy Geocities pages. You’ll end up with some kind of web site that has a domain like this:

www.geocities.com/yourname/index.htm

Yeah, I know, seeing your name in there gives you a real great feeling. But that’s about all you’re going to get out of it.

Getting these sites indexed by the search engines is close to impossible. And even if you do get them indexed, do you really think that anybody is going to take you seriously when they see that you can’t even afford to pay for web hosting? Forget about the fact that these sites look like crap with the forced advertising for Yahoo that you need to do. You’ll be able to count the number of sales you’ll make from these sites on one hand, if that many.

Plus, with free web hosting, you are at the mercy of these sites.

You get practically no bandwidth, no disk space and they can take your site away from you at a moment’s notice.

If you’re going to run a professional business online, you need 2 things.

1. Your OWN domain.

2. Professional web hosting.

And if you think these things are expensive, they’re not.

You can get a domain for about $10 a year or less even. Domain hosting you can get for $15 a month or less and get more than enough disk space and bandwidth to run a professional business. If you can’t afford that little bit of investment, then quite honestly you have no business being in business.

Bottom line is this. Your potential customers will NOT take you seriously with a  Geocities type domain and hosting. This will result in NO sales and a FAILED business.

So please do yourself a favor. Get yourself your own domain and some professional web hosting.

To YOUR Success,

 Maria Gudelis