"Free is a blinding, hypnotizing word. That word and that word alone can even make a wise webmaster do an unwise thing."

Free. Is it the most overused adult sales keyword? I'll bet my rent you have that word in at least one of your sponsor links or promotional pages. I'll bet my beer money you've actually opened a link with the word Free in it by your own multi-tasking fingers. Free is a blinding, hypnotizing word. That word and that word alone can even make a wise webmaster do an unwise thing.

I have referred in the past to Free adult hosts for your porn page. The power of the word Free has brought these hosts tens of thousands of webmasters. In turn, these webmasters make pages that fly the banners/programs of the Free host and promote them all over cyberspace. You understand that you pay no money to use and promote your Free host site. You also understand you do pay by sacrificing a certain amount of sales to those Free host banners/programs nestled permanently in your top sales slot. Many adult webmasters choose this sacrifice and make nice incomes from Free host websites.

You read the TOS (Terms Of Service) for your Free host account. You read the TOS for your sponsor affiliation. There is another realm you will explore where the word Free is prevalent and where TOS should be read and read again. That realm is the Free domain name.

The ads are everywhere: "We'll register your domain name for Free" or "Free www.yourname.com" fill banner space on multitudinous websites. Their language would lead even the harshest skeptic to believe they were getting a free domain name. Before you go filling out forms and signing service agreements with these Free URL providers, keep this in mind: There is no such thing as a Free domain name.

There are three kinds of approaches used by Free URL services.

"We will register your Domain absolutely Free"

When you see this kind of sales copy on a site, look deeper into the TOS. What you will find is that you will not have to pay for the work or research involved in learning how to properly register a domain.

The service will take care of that nasty business AND you'll get Free email AND perhaps Free hosting for your site.

What the big print won't divulge is that while you can register a domain for Free, it isn't owned or leased to anyone until money is paid to Network Solutions or another approved and authorized registrar. You still have to pay to lease your domain. You may have thought of the name and the name may be directly branded to your business.

Unless you keep paying the biannual InterNIC registration fee, the domain name is never ever completely yours. Kind of like the coffee ad that touts their mountain grown product without stating the fact that most coffee is grown on mountains, anyone can register or park a domain for approximately two weeks.

"Free Registration and Domain Parking"

This is another kind of catch phrase you see in search results for Free domain. Domain parking is the catch 22 of domain registration.

To register a domain with an official registrar, your domain has to already have an existing web host. To get web hosting, you have to have a domain. While most pay hosts will allow you time to register a domain, the Free parking service takes advantage of a little-known loophole in the URL registration process. The two-week grace period.

InterNic allows anyone with proper contact information and a DNS (Domain Name Server) on which their new URL will reside to register or reserve the domain name for two weeks. If after two weeks, no money is paid for the domain, the domain is up for lease to the first buyer. The Free domain parking service then has the chance to lease your URL for their own purposes.

"Absolutely Free Domain Name"

While I could find many of the above two types of Free domain services, I found only one domain service that paid the actual registration fee. This service is the closest you can get to a real domain with you as the person responsible for it. They claim your trade-off for this too good to be true offer is their framed ad banner permanently set at the bottom of any page you have directed to your URL.

The beauty of this service is that you can get email with your domain and you are officially the contact for the domain in the InterNIC WHOIS database. They also can cloak a page you may have on another server so that the URL in the address bar reads as if it were your domain address. A thorough reading of their TOS reveals this method of Free domain provision the most dangerous of all.

When a domain is officially registered and fees are paid, you will be considered the contact person on the WHOIS database. Yet you cannot transfer your domain from this service unless you pay for their upgraded program. If you do not choose to upgrade your membership, the contact information is changed back to the name of your Free service. Even if you do pay for the upgraded program, transferring your domain to another DNS is a grueling time-involved process.

Nothing is Free. The word may be powerful and blinding but nothing can replace registering a URL in your name on a host you paid for.