Is this really free?
Yes.
Why is this free? There must be some kind of catch?
1. No, there’s no catch.
2. This is an experiment. I charge $5000 and up to build websites for people and businesses. I thought it would be a neat experiment to teach you how to build your own website via an online course. And instead of selling the course (which many members have said they would happily pay for) I want to see what happens if I give it away for free. Whenever I create value and put it into the world, good things happen to me.
Do you make money from this project?
If you sign up for a hosting account through InMotion Hosting, I receive a referral fee from them. If you buy a theme from StudioPress, I will receive a small referral fee. It’s not much, but it helps keep the lights on.
How do I know you’re not just promoting those products because they’ll pay you to do it?
I suppose you can’t know for sure, because this is the internet and you definitely shouldn’t believe everything you read online.
But… I will say this: I’ve used every major hosting company out there. I run a web development company and have built over 500 websites for clients in a huge range of industries. The biggest hosting companies pay out much larger referral fees than InMotion Hosting does. If I was just promoting a company for the money, I’d jump on the same bandwagon as everyone else and promote whatever company paid me the most. But the truth is that I’ve had some really frustrating and negative experiences with a lot of those big hosting companies. Client sites running slow, files disappearing, entire sites being wiped from their servers. I’ve been burned.
And most of the major hosting companies are now owned by one giant conglomerate (Bluehost, Hostgator, Hostmonster, and more than 70 other hosting companies are all owned by Endurance International Group.) I’m sure EIG tries to do a good job, but I’ve noticed significant problems since EIG acquired Hostgator (where I used to host my sites) and Bluehost (where a lot of my clients used to host their sites). Response times have gotten slower, sites go down more often, etc.
So, I moved all of my own sites, and my clients’ sites over to InMotion Hosting.
InMotion is a smaller company. They’re based in Los Angeles. They use high-end servers running SSD drives (solid state drives) which are up to 20x faster and much more reliable than the traditional spinning drives that other hosting companies use. They offer great pricing, especially to people who sign up for an account through me. They’ve been a great and supportive partner in everything I do. They offer nightly backups. Their support team is fantastic! Seriously, even if the pricing was triple what it is, I’d still be a customer because the support is that great.