The $11 Marketing Funnel

[Kurt]

I definitely agree. If the free site is absolutely necessary the very first goal in my mind is buying a domain. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to put your content and business in somebody else's control any longer than you have to.

I've put a lot of thought into this over the years trying to come up with the bare minimum budget someone needs to get into IM. In theory it's possible to do for free. Having your own domain name doesn't really increase the odds of success, it's insurance in the future for your efforts.

Things like you upload a pdf to a free site, build links to that PDF and then the free site changes their rules and shuts down your account. If you at least use a domain redirect you can upload your pdf to another free download host and just change the redirect destination to the new download.

I actually have a hard time not thinking a hosting service for a domain isn't also essential. Again it's theoretically possible to make money without one but I think it's a lot harder without than with.