Free isn’t Really Free on the Internet

Free, free, free!

The internet is a great place. Everything seems to be free! Free news, free stock quotes, free memberships, free offers, free games. Is there any better place in the world than the free internet?

Unfortunately, the old aphorism: “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”, definitely applies here. Every online business advertises free stuff, but is it really free? Let’s take a closer look.

Blogging:

Let’s begin with blogging. Every day, more and more people are discovering the online world of blogging. If someone wants to start his own blog, he will soon notice numerous “free” services at his disposal. Blogger and Wordpress are probably the two most popular of these.

The first thing that a person might notice when he signs up for one of these free services is that he doesn’t get his own domain name. So, rather than www.myblog.com, his site is something like: www.myblog.blogspot.com or www.myblog.wordpress.com.

Now, if you are one of those people thinking about starting your own blog, you might think: “that’s fine with me, I’m not doing this for commercial purposes, this is my own personal blog for my thoughts and ramblings, I don’t care how the domain name looks, I just want it to be free.”

The problem here is that the fate of your blog is forever tied to the fate of those services. What if, 5 years down the road, the Blogger or Wordpress services are discontinued? If something happens to to the blogspot.com or wordpress.com domain names, your site will go down with them.

Wow, so after 5 years of hard work, your site could vanish in an instant! What a rip off: you would probably want your money back. Oops, what money?

One way to avoid this is to buy your own domain name. This is very cheap (about $10 per year), but then again, that means it isn’t “free” anymore.

Another limitation of these free blogging services is customization. Normally, you are restricted to a small set of “templates”, which dictate the look and layout of your blog. These are great if you are unfamiliar with html coding, but your blog will look just like everyone else’s blog across the internet who use the same service as you. This seriously hampers your ability to stand out.

It is possible to get around this limitation by downloading one of a number of “free” templates on the internet. Here, though, we run into problems again. While the free templates provided by the blogging service may have been bland and uncustomizable, these free downloadable templates take full advantage of your lack of html knowledge. They are often filled with unnecessary code, which often promote the creator of the template. They could also be stuffed with malicious code that causes pop-up advertisements or contain viruses. Worse, if you lack html knowledge, they are equally as uncustomizable as the free but bland templates.

Other Internet services:

So you’re thinking, “all that is great, but I’m not a blogger, so I don’t really have to worry about that. I just use YouTube and Google.”

Ok, let’s take a look at those services. I have just pulled up a YouTube music video of one of my favorite artists to watch for free. The first thing I noticed is that at the 10-second mark, an ad popped up asking me to please buy the ringtone of the song for my mobile phone. The next thing I notice is that the entire right side of the screen is filled with an advertisement by Microsoft. This ad is is flashing at intermittent intervals, desperately trying to draw my attention away from the music video. That ad remained there for the entire duration of the music video (about 5 minutes).

Directly beneath the Microsoft ad was a smaller ad for Warner Brothers, the music label which produces the music video. Finally, when the song ended, the cell phone ring tone ad reappeared and remained on the screen until I selected another video. Now, you may think – “hey, that’s cool, I never click on those ads or anything, they don’t bother me.”

Well, any marketer knows the phrase “mind share”. Mind share (from Wikipedia) is: “the development of consumer awareness or popularity, and is one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion.”

Your mind is a limited resource. There are only so many brands that you can be aware of at any time. Even if you don’t click on the advertisements, the advertisers are still achieving their goal of filling your head with their brand.

What about Google, that wonderful search engine that we all use every day? Most people think that Google is a company that provides search services. Those people are only partially correct. Google’s shareholders know that Google is primarily an advertising company. They provide the search engine as a means for you to view advertisements that they serve to you.

When you perform a search on Google, you will always notice the “Sponsored Link” highlighted at the top of your search results. There are usually even more sponsored links running down the right hand side of the page. This is how Google gets paid.

Google also provides other services, like Google Maps. When I typed “Boston” into Google Maps, they showed me a map of Boston, with “Sponsored Links” to hotels in Boston.

What about the Blogger service that we talked about earlier? This is the “free” blogging service provided by Google. If you sign up for this service, Google will urge you to put their ads on your site, from which they take a large cut. Google is primarily interested in providing their Blogger service so that more people will create free content on which they can serve their ads. If you are a beginning blogger, there is a good chance that you are the only person who even sees your blog on a regular basis. If you put ads on your blog, YOU are the only person being advertised to!

Free isn’t Free

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that free isn’t really free on the internet. Every business that is offering these free services are trying to make money in some fashion or another. It is important to understand how they make their money, and why they are offering their service for free. If you can do this, you can avoid getting duped, and you can make your internet experience as efficient and pleasing as possible.