You Get What You Pay For

Posted On: 2011-06-13

It's so obvious that I really shouldn't have to remind you of it but here in adult we're always looking for the free option. If we can get something for nothing we seem to think that we've scored a bonus and at times there have been people who have tried to build their entire empire on free stuff.

They look for free software ... free images ... free hosting ... and they think that they've hit the big time when they start making money but what are you really building when you base your whole business on free stuff?

You're building an empire with a foundation that's about as solid as the air we breath. When you build empire on a foundation of free stuff you have no guarantees ... there's nothing solid about your business at all ... in fact you're just one heartbeat away from disaster.

Free can be here right now and gone in a split second and when it's free it may never be coming back.

When you're in business you need guarantees that the services you're using will be here today ... tomorrow ... and well into the future. If things go pear-shaped with the server where you're sites reside you need to know that there will be someone around to fix the problem.

It's the same with software ... you need to know that it's going to go on working and not suddenly develop a heap of bugs that are never going to be fixed.

And with content you need to know that you have a genuine license to use it and you're not going to suddenly find that you have to replace every image you've been using because the guy who gave it away for free actually stole it from somewhere else.

But could any of those things really go wrong ... is it really so bad to use free hosting and anything else you can get for free?

Well there's a well-known guy here in Australia who got a nasty reminder this weekend that not only do you get what you pay for when you use something that's free but sometimes you even get than you expected.

Darren Rowse ... the guy behind the very popular Problogger website ... was on his way to a football match on Saturday when someone sent him an email to warn him that all of the videos that he has produced and uploaded to YouTube for his blog were no longer showing up.

Instead there was a message displayed in place of the video that said that his user account had been suspended and there was a not-so-subtle hint that the suspension was because Darren was involved in scamming people.

Now I know Darren and although we've never met I know that he is definitely not a scammer but that's not the impression that newcomers to his very helpful blog were getting whenever they looked at a post that included one of those videos that was up there on YouTube.

Now I can understand why Darren puts his videos on YouTube ... after all a lot of people use YouTube as a search engine and Google often returns YouTube videos in their search results ... but now I wouldn't be surprised if Darren thinks twice about embedding his videos in his website from the free hosting on YouTube.

He's a guy who can afford to pay for the extra bandwidth those videos create and he doesn't need the aggravation of YouTube labeling him as a scammer. And it must have really ruined his Saturday when YouTube shut down his account ... his football team didn't do much to lift his spirits either because they lost.

Fortunately for Darren he has lots of friends out there ... friends who have some influence ... friends who know the right people to talk to ... and now his videos are all back on line.

But who do you know? How much influence do you have? When you use a free hosting service do you know who to call when your sites go down? In fact is there anyone you could call if your sites went down?

In this industry you simply can not rely on anything that's free. You have to always remind yourself that you get what you pay for and when you pay nothing you get nothing.

It's no different to any other business out there in the real world ... if you want to make money you have to spend some money and if you're not prepared to do that then you may as well not even bother making a start in this industry.

Any business is serious business and if you're not prepared to get serious about your business and spend some money then you won't be here for long.