If you are starting a new website, the first choice you will be making will be whether or not you want to pay for hosting. Some websites pretty much require paid hosting, while others don’t. We’ll break it down one by one so you can try to determine whether or not it’s worth the cost for you to rent some space on the web…

Blogging
If you’re a blogger, you might think “I’ll start with a free site at one of the best wordpress hosting spots and then worry about paying for features later,” but honestly, the best free hosting often comes from sites with no paid features, so this might not be the best idea. You will find, rather, that after a certain point, once you’ve reached a few thousand regular readers, you might have to move your whole blog over to a new site. Although, a WordPress blog might be a good way to start for free and eventually upgrade to a full, paid membership.

Video
If you’re a video-maker, there are people who make a living on their videos through Youtube alone. Now the downside to that is that you have to already be drawing thousands upon thousands of views on a regular basis just for Youtube to take you seriously when you say you want some of that ad revenue that you’ve been earning them. You might have a better shot at making a profit through a free membership at blip.tv. When you get to the point of wanting to sell merchandise, DVDs and so on, that’s when you’ll want to look into getting a site set up to lead people to your Blip or Youtube-hosted videos.

Webcomics
If you’re an artist, you probably want to start with a paid host right off the bat for a few reasons. First of all, content restrictions. If you want to go on a free host, you can forget doing any dirty jokes. Secondly, it’s hard enough getting a regular audience in the competitive webcomic marketplace without a free host’s website attached to your domain. In any event, you want all that ad revenue for yourself, so get a Google Ad Sense account and a paid website.