One of the timeless questions for web business is why they think their costumers should pay for something they can find for free. The answer is never easy when struggling in a sea already full of small and big fishes. The web companies, as any other company should, see this through from the point of view of a customer.
First step is DEFINITION, define your objective. Your objective for the website is the first crossroad to pass when deciding to pay or not for web related services. If the objective of the site is in no way demanding paid-only features (remember that vanity features still being among the objectives), this customer will be well served by free services. This very website in which I am publishing this blog is completely free for all things I use it. There are paid services which I will never pay for, and the reason I will explain further on in this post. If you have concerns with Ads, limited features like speed, space, traffic or content, then you should proceed to the next step instead of going towards completely free services. However, if you feel comfortable in giving up ease to use, and get around these limitations by ignoring or circumventing them, then you choice is made: All Free is for you.
Second step is MEASUREMENT. Start balancing the up and downsides of each aspect. You will never get a top level domain for free, that is a given. Either you get a free domain buying other stuff, or get free stuff buying a domain. The second step breaks down in what serves you better:
- Domain names aways give you control over the access to your content, as you can use the domain, its subdomains and its services as you see fit, like email adresses and routing.
- Free hostings wont earn you a domain name, and they have one or more limitations, being space, traffic, content or reliability.
- Free blogs, flogs, podcasts follow the same pattern with the adition that you cant change its utility unless you subscribe and configure other services entirely.
- Free email often give space and basic features, but still lacking a sound address for business and all the lack of reliability.
After measuring the limitations of the all free services and adaptation to your objective, if you still think that free services will satisfy you, then free services it is. The best thing to do in this step is actually using free services for your objectives in a “trial period” to really measure their features. You aways can change from free to paid services, and that is why this decision isnt as crucial as some web services business may imply. You also can change from paid to free services in most cases. That is something to measure aswell: How flexible is your objective.
Important note: If the measurement reveals the your objective isnt reacheable, and you think it is better to change the objective, then start over again from the DEFINITION step, the first one. This will make sense further in this post.
Third step is ANALYSIS. Break down your objective in micro objectives inside the macro objective. If your experience or thoughts about how to accomodate your objective using free or paid services is proven right, keep as it is. If not, you have two choices: Change services or Modify Objectives. Either way, the next step will be the same.
Fourth step is IMPROVE. If your analysis has proven right, the only thing to consider is improve. If there is no space for expanding, improve your ways to keep tracking of results, because they will still be useful as it is a cyclic process. If you have chosen to switch strategies, then your improvements will be the change among the 3 choices you have left:
- Modify your objective: If free services cant cut it and paid services doesnt worth given your objectives, you can aways modify your objectives to lower costs or adapt to what you can have for free. Aways remember that zero cost is absolute lower cost than any other cost. Modify your objectives acordingly to be cost effective. Zero cost and zero profit still cost effective too. For this step I am intentionally avoiding the “work added value”, to be covered further more in this post.
- Change your services: If your free services cant all satisfy the needs of your objectives, or paid services doesnt worth as a whole, you can break down the services and implement them in a case by case manner. You can use a free domain in a paid hosting, free email with paid domain, or any combination among free and paid services. In this step you analyse the effectiveness of each aspect. You can mask your free email with your paid domain, you can have the free email from a paid hosting, which could give a zero or low cost domain, among dozens of options you have to integrate free services with paid ones. You can even find less cheap services which have addons of free services making them actually cheaper.
The improving is the hardest part because it deals with changes often unpredictable, and unpredictable results are never good in business, or in life. However, changes with unpredictable results can also give space to better things to come. Still, the previous steps are there, and are previous ones, to minimize the unpredictable aspects.
The fifth step is CONTROLING. The old auto industry moto: “What good is power if you have no control ?”. In business it is also true. Controlling is what keeps us sharp to predict or remedy bad changes, and to aknowledge good changes. If you can see bad things comming, or if you are prepared when they come, they sure will be less harmful. But it is also true that when you cant see good things comming, or if you are unprepared when they come, they sure will be less rewarding, if rewarding at all. Control means control your costs, your profits, your likelyness to reach your objective, and to keep your objective alive. Take notes of data to know exactly what you are doing in the path to your goal. Wait untill all chips fall where they may before passing to the next stage after control. Be sure to know all data you need regarding your objective, and even take notes about the objective itself, as it can evolve too.
After your control data is all ready, you will go back to the second step, the measurement. Balance once again the up and downsides, but now with much more experience and knowledge. And then continue from there until get here again.
The topics I left to discuss after the “management system” I described only make sense supported by the knowledge of them. This steps I described are my adaptation to the case at hand from the general 6 sigma model DMAIC. DMAIC which stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
The results of my own aplications of this model have shown that I am better served using the free features of this site for its purpose, but using third part paid services when something I need is not free here. And the reason is based on the concept of work added value.
Not all things are zero cost when you consider that the time you spend to make them work as you need you could be spending doing something else and earning money. Money you dont earn is money you lost. Before you start calling me greedy, I point out that if you are actually doing something you like to do, it is a win-win situation and if you are comfortable with compensating the cost of working in something more than you need with the joy you get on that work, it isnt money lost. That is preciselly why I ignored the work cost above.
My passion is automation, and I like to set up things to work together in order to save me work later even if it gives me extra work now. That doesnt mean all people should, would or could do the same, for the same reasons, and that is a fact to take into consideration aswell. Sometimes paid services are only more suitable because they give you free time to earn more than they cost in other business.
After all that rumbling, just a few people shall get this far (from the few I think even start reading after the title), and for those I left my comment section and public email to inquiries as to free website services, and what paid services I can provide. I am not really into earning the money I dont deserve, so, if you ask me, I wont tell you to get paid services I provide if I know you can handle your needs with free ones. Anything, ask me.
