I was probably one of the last holdouts when it came to paid hosting. I started on free adult hosts. I made me some money on free hosting. I used myself for content. I got my galleries accepted on the best and worst of TGPs. I barely spent a nickel. I t worked for me.

"You can get a domain and a host for practically nothing. You won't lose your shirt if you go about this one step at a time."

During those free-host days, I learned how traffic works. I saw how affiliate programs can make you money. I discovered self-promotion and building relationships with other adult webmasters. I saw newbies turn to moguls and I saw moguls lose their riches.

At that (1998-2001?) time free hosts weren’t such a pariah. You knew you were losing some of your traffic to their headers and footers and that was okay. It was the price of Free.

Then something sort of bad happened to free adult hosts. When I got in this business, web hosting was damned expensive and domains cost something like $35.00 a year. Somewhere around 2000, the bottom dropped out from under hosting and domain registration prices. Today you can register and lease a domain plus open a paid hosting account for as less than twenty US dollars. I got my last virtual host/1 ­year domain registration for less than fifteen bucks.

Now free adult hosts are desperate. Some have turned to tacky tricks like auto-install tool bars and dialers. This sneaky sabotage comes embedded in every “free” page and permission to do it is buried in some unreadable TOS.

Fortunately, sponsors got smart about free hosting. Bandwidth is so cheap and webmasters love free bandwidth and so sponsors aplenty provide hosted galleries as affiliate content. Some affiliate programs offer bannerless hosting as long as the webmasters use it to sell sponsor sites. Sponsors have implemented free-hosted TGP and AVS to their webmasters.

Which brings me back to the free adult host. God love them. I still got a page or 20 somewhere out there on gratis bandwidth. Once in a while I get check from a gallery that was listed long ago. Free hosts can’t all be evil. There’s still a few righteous ones.

The point I try to make on Cozy Frog and Cozy Academy is that you are the luckiest person in the world. You can start a business without buying small classified ads or making down payments on worthless real estate. You can learn everything you need to know without leaving your house or losing your day job. You can get web space, content and a free pass to all our knowledge and you can do this for no money down. Need to know about web usage works and how sites operate on the web? Get free hosting, preferably from a sponsor. Need to know how to use common scripts and templates and software? Get free stuff that you can sample and follow the usage agreement. Need to know everything? Come to Cozy! WE’RE FREE!

Let’s return to that paid hosting thing.

I use a certain registrar when I want to get a new domain. If the domain I want is not taken, I pay roughly nine bucks for a one-year lease. I think ICANN added some tax so add fifty cents to that total. After I’m done snagging a domain, I sign up for a small virtual hosting account. That plan gives me 500 MB of storage, 25 GIGS of transfer, 1 MSQL database and PHP support. It costs me four US dollars a month. While this kind of webspace account isn’t much, it’s certainly enough to handle a new, small adult site.

When one of my mini virtual sites got listed at popular link site, I had to upgrade my account to handle the traffic. Now I pay thirty clams a month to host that site.

Do you see what I’m telling you? You can get a domain and a host for practically nothing. You won’t lose your shirt if you go about this one step at a time.

Almost nobody lists a page or a gallery that’s served from a free host. This is a cold, hard fact. 1998 is over. Bandwidth is cheap. Domains are cheap. Yet cyber real estate is worth everything to your future success. You must have your own domain. These days, it's hard to be a professional without one.