Before we start it may be worthwhile to note that generally there is no free lunch. My site is one of the few exceptions, since it is non-profit orientated.
There must be at least 500 hundred web hosting Application Service Providers (or ASPs) in the Internet (meaning the world). Quite a few would provide free storage space of 10MB for you to set up your shop. Their business plan is for you to generate traffic to their site so that they can generate revenue from advertisements on their site. The world being so vast, it is fairly difficult for a product or service to be noticed unless you advertise. Of course they have the right to place advertisement on your web page as well.
Other methods by which you will be contributing to their revenue would be the statistics they can collect from people who visit their site. Generally you also will have to reveal a fair bit about yourself in order to be given the free storage space. In their terms of Service (TOS) you may be asked to give consent for them to use the data without any inhibition.
So before you submit your application for the free storage space, read all the fine prints. Generally with this account they will allow you to choose a personalised sub-domain name. For example, if the portal of the host is "www.abc.com" and you name your shop ahbeng, they will assign you the address "ahbeng.abc.com". Sort of ahbeng from abc. So you may also like to find out whether the host has a "red light" district in their site, for those who are not comfortable in being associated with such activities.
By and large the policies are not much of a problem unless you intend to engage in illegal or subversive activities. At the most you will be bothered by unwanted sales promotion.
To me the greatest worry is how long the host can stay in business. Many are here today and gone tomorrow. If that happens it meant that you will have to re-establish your presence in cyberspace all over again.
At the moment I have set up three Home Pages. Beside this site you are now at, I have a Christian Home Page in Yahoo, and an Home Page on Singapore in Tripodasia. I found Yahoo Geocities the most friendly of the three sites. I would highly recommend this portal. Tripodasia is not bad either.
I have problem with America Online. If you used their standard web page format it is easy. But if you want to design your own page then it is a big problem, unless you purchase the FTP recommended.
If you feel more secure and have a better peace of mind with a paid service, (when you pay they would have to give you better service. Maybe.) there are also hundreds and hundreds of ASPs to chose from. I have made a preliminary survey and for US$20 a month (most of them would rather prefer that you pay for a year and are willing to give a 10% discount for you to do so) you should be able to get about 20MB of disk space.
For a start 20MB is more than sufficient. Look for one which allows you to upgrade when you need more space. Almost all of them will capture your attention with a list of what comes with the plan. Of course this is the lower end of their service so do not expect too much. What they do not say is more important than what they say, and you have to get very technical. It is good to have a strategy and be clear of what you need. No use paying for more than you need. As you progresses and, hopefully, have the necessary revenue you can always upgrade. It is not wise to spend beyond what you can afford trying to get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
It is one thing "to dare to fail",
it is another "to be greedy".
Learn from the first wave of dot.coms.
I personally am a beginner and would not be able to advise you much in this matter.
One of the most important benefits of a paid web hosting service is you can have your own domain name. If you liked your shop to be known as "MokhtarPteLtd" you can have "www.mokhtarpteltd.com" as the address (or domain), if no one has yet registered this name.
Along with this, many ASPs will also allow you to have sub-domain names and lots of email addresses, one for each member of your company. Please note that most would say free service to register your domain. What they may not say is that you have to pay the registrar (a different entity) on an annual basis. InterNIC charges US$70 per domain name at registration time for the first two-year period and US$35 per year after that.
