Stop Seeking Free Everything, It Wont Help Your Business - Internet Marketing Australia

About a week ago, I was involved in a conversation with a friend about his business. He is doing fine as a startup and I'm really happy for him. But when it comes to discussing about the possibility of expanding his business online, he repeatedly ask for the cost to implement it.

Worst of all, he wants to find a free alternative to everything I come up with. That sounds cheap. And I can't get the thought out of my mind. Why so much people have this free mind set online?

Perhaps it is because the availability of information. You can get almost any kind of information for free on the web. Free software that work great, from antivirus to image editing and word processor, all are available for free.

Thanks to the opensource model, there are even complete operating system that is available for free, including all the source code that build the core of the system.

Perhaps it is because of the competitiveness of various industries online. By default, business owners compete on price instead of offering better and more value to the customers. Price matters a lot, but it's not the only matter than counts. This is true especially for services.

Growing a successful business online involves spending for premium quality products and services. We can't just avoid that by any means.

The best way is to illustrate this is by giving an example.

Web hosting is a very competitive industry. Companies are offering the greatest and best features for pennies a day. Some hosting providers try to beat their competitions by offering free hosting just to get customers into signing up with their services.

Of course, they hope that once the customers exceed the usage, they'll upgrade and then it's time for them to make money. Very bright people may be able to make this work. I don't know about you but that's not how I want to do business.

The free customers they draw in are more likely cheap skates who can't afford to pay. They're more likely to move to another hosting providers than to upgrade. The model of their site may not earn them a dime so don't expect them to pay.

May be I'm a bit harsh, but spending is compulsory to get premium quality services. I can give you more examples but I think you got the point.

If you compare the cost of spending for online services, they are like nothing. Where else can you start a business for $100 and have the potential to grow into multi-million business?

It may cost $30 to get a good quality hosting package, but if it can offer higher uptime and faster response, it may as well increase the credibility of my business. The cost will be adjusted when you know you won't lost a customer because of the down time of the server.

Business is a business is a business, so stop being cheap skate and start "spending" on the necessary now.