do you pay for your own website or do you use the free websites which are available? i was just wondering which was better and which gets more hits

I use a combo of the two (sort-of).

I have my domain with yahoo, and pay $5 monthly with geocities.yahoo.com for the hosting. I could do the free geocities, but I'd rather have it 100% ad-free.

I pay for my own website. I've never had a freewebs so I don't know too much about them. I have my website through TLC Web Enterprises for around $11 a month. I haven't had much problems with mine. You're also able to check your page stats and see all sorts of information such as number of hits, referrers and it shows you the links that people found your page from. THere is a whole lot more that I'm missing.

ok thanx

I use site build it. So far I love it. I had to spend a little money, but it walked me through step by step on how to build a high ranking website that gets a lot of traffic. I started my site at the end of January and I am now getting about 70 - 100 unique visitors a day. It has been a work in progress, but I think it will really keep building and pay off in the end. If you want to see my site it is in my signature. If you are interested there is more info on my site how I built mine and how to get started.
Good luck!

I went with a ISP and I pay 60 bucks a year and have a ton of server space. I use just good ol frontpage to upload my stuff.

I highly recommend buying your own domain name..it just makes you look more professional.

I used Homestead.com . I pay about $6 per month. It was very easy and I didn't know a thing about building a website. Granted it's not the fanciest website, but it gets me out there.

it depends on where you are at.... i am just starting out and don't feel that i am ready to pay for a website, and i don't think i could build a very good one on my own- so in comes freewebs. i really like it. they have a lot of templates to choose from and it is super easy to "build" a website. if you chose that you are ready to buy a domain, etc. you can continue having freewebs host it for you. like i said, it depends on where you are at.....

well i am qualified in making websites so i would prefer to do my own from scratch, does anyone no where i can do this for free?

I use free webs, usually get 5-20 hits a day. I know that I would get more if I paid for a website because it could show up easier in google searches. But I haven't decided on a business name yet, so I am holding off. When I do choose a name and a domain, I will definately pay for a website. Websites you pay for have much more options to customize and make look more professional than free webs. I know this because I actually manage a professional website for my family's catering business. From the reasearch I have done, godaddy.com is really good to work with. hth

I've been using googlepages for a long time, it's very user friendly and very easy to acces. I really like the idea of making my own because I'm always changing things, adding new photos, etc.
REcently I got my own domain, and I'm still working on it. I also agree it makes you look more professional and I wanted to register my domain before someone else got it. Not that is a very common name, it's just I didn't want to buy my name from someone.