If I believed everything I read in market research reports (and in e-mail dispatches with the subject line "TAKE CREDIT CARDS NOW!"), the entire planet will soon be buying everything exclusively online. And if I act now, I can make my fortune in the e-commerce revolution!

Fortunately, I don't believe everything I read. There are a mess of businesses selling services or products, from contractors to chimney sweeps, that can't figure out how to ply their trade via an e-commerce site. But that doesn't mean a Web site can't benefit their business.

Many businesses can use the Internet for low-key marketing, either by maintaining a mailing list or by hanging out a Web shingle that, if nothing else, tells visitors what the company does and how to contact it. These businesses can set up a site without opening up an e-store or spending money.

Free Domain Hosting
www.webjump.com

Search the Web for free hosting services, and you'll find little more than waived setup fees or a couple of months gratis. After that, the fees kick in, and you're staring at between $10 and $30 per month (at the low end of the scale) for an ISP to store your Web site.

For many businesses, that's chump change. For others, it's a waste of money. If you want to register a domain to keep others from taking it and maintain a functional site with minimal fuss, consider WebJump (www.webjump.com). The service will host up to 25MB of a Web site--more than enough for a promotional site, even with loads of graphics--either as virtual domain (yourcompany.webjump.com) or a fully qualified domain (www.yourcompany.com). Unlike other low-cost hosts, WebJump doesn't impose a so-many-megabytes-per-month data transfer cap. WebJump also provides technical support via e-mail (24-hour turnaround time), and links to sites with prefab CGI scripts for enhancing your site. Best of all, there are no setup charges or monthly fees. (Registering your domain at Network Solutions will set you back $70.)

In exchange for this service, WebJump reserves the top inch of every page on your site for a frame full of advertising. This prominent positioning is off-putting for some, but it's not objectionable, nor are any of the ads I've seen in rotation over the past few months of testing the service.

Registering a domain with WebJump is a snap. Enter the domain you want, and WebJump checks its availability. If it's not taken, supply the necessary details and WebJump registers you for its own service and applies to Network Solutions for the domain name. Once you get your WebJump-assigned password via e-mail, you're ready to administer your site--even before the domain goes "live."

When your site does go online, you can use FTP programs or the site's own file management pages to upload your site. WebJump doesn't provide any Web development tools (as do AOL and Tripod), but it does provide free downloads of ecBuilder 4.0 (personal and SOHO editions). There are also links for downloading lots of useful free Web building tools, from FTP programs to HTML validators for the Mac and PC.

When you log onto your WebJump site, you can add, delete, and edit pages, and examine a breakdown of the site's usage for the previous day that expands on a summary WebJump e-mails you (almost) every day. The usage charts are handy--they show your raw hit count, referring pages, unique visitors, and page views, plus a list of broken links. While useful, these lists are limited--they apply only to a single day, and you don't get access to the raw data over time, which many hard-core Webmasters like to use for statistical analysis.

How reliable is a site hosted on WebJump's servers? I've only clocked a single outage in the past three months--not bad for any host, especially one that's giving it away. At press time, the file management tool was being revamped, although FTP service remained unaffected.

The downsides to WebJump are few and frankly finicky for a giveaway service. You have to be careful with your HTML because of WebJump's use of frames: If you code a link on your site to return to the home page using your domain name (www.yourname.com, for example), you'll get two ad frames at the top of the page. No matter where your visitors click to, they'll always see the URL for your home page in the browser's location box, which makes it impossible for them to bookmark a particular page on your site.

After registering my domain, I noticed an increase in spam, too, especially those about making money with your Web site. WebJump swears it doesn't share your information with any third parties, but it does register your site with a mess of search engines. Spam, I guess, is the price of having a presence on the Net.

WebJump isn't the only service that will host your domain free of charge. Web1000 (www.web1000.com) has a similar service--but I dismissed it for the purposes of this column because the service carries adult-oriented advertising, which may appear in the frame at the top of any of your Web pages. Most of the businesses I consulted on this issue felt that this didn't project the right image for their business's site.

Free Mailing Lists
www.topica.com

The best customers are repeat customers, and one way to bring them back is to keep in touch via a mailing list. (For more, see our recent Internet Basics columns.) But as the number of subscribers--or the number of mailing lists--grows, management becomes a nuisance, especially if you're using Eudora or a similar e-mail program to run the show.

Topica is a handy Web-based service that makes managing a list a breeze. Once you sign up, customers can subscribe to your list by sending e-mail to an address like

yourname-subscribe@topica.com and get off the list by e-mailing

yourname-unsubscribe@topica.com. As with LISTSERV, you can create moderated mailing lists, have postings shared with all subscribers or sent only to you, send out messages to an entire list, and more. All that Topica asks in return is a short one-line ad at the bottom of every outgoing newsletter or message--a lot less intrusive than the bigger ads inserted by other free list-serving sites, such as ONElist (www.onelist.com) and eGroups (www.egroups.com). How ever, if you're interested in a revenue-sharing scheme, you can have more prominent ads placed in your mailing list newsletters.

Setting up a new list at Topica involves filling out a four-page form, describing the list, the list type (such as unmoderated discussion or announcement), and setting up administration parameters (do replies go to the whole list or just to you, the list owner; whether the list archive is public; etc.). Then you set up welcome and other administrative messages and enter the e-mail addresses of people you want to invite to join your list. To add e-mail addresses, you can type them in by hand or import a slug of them in a TXT file.

Once your list is underway, the site tracks crucial statistics, such as bounced messages, new subscribers, and current activity on discussion lists. Better yet, it archives lists (privately, if you prefer) and makes them searchable. Since Topica hosts so many other e-mail lists, it's bound to draw lots of traffic.

Maintenance on the Cheap
www.freedrive.com
www.mcafee.com/promos/voodoo_dm.asp

There's more to business than maintaining the real or digital storefront you present to the public.

There's all the back-office work, too--data backup, virus scanning, system optimization, and dealing with the dreaded Y2K problem. Lucky for you, a couple of sites tackle all of these issues for free.

FreeDrive is what it says--a free online storage site where you can stash 20MB of crucial data on secure servers. Backing up your files (and restoring them) is a breeze, and it is all done via browser. Sure, 20MB isn't much space and squeezing even that through a dial-up connection isn't speedy, especially over a typically slow secure connection. But it's still a worthwhile service, a decent secondary backup, at least for vital files.

As for system maintenance, McAfee's Web clinic has been offering an online version of VirusScan for many months, and it is currently pushing a slew of other free services, including Y2K compliance scanning. (You need to download a free Internet Explorer or Navigator plug-in to make this work.) I've been using McAfee Online's VirusScan since last spring, when a nasty bout of the Ethan A virus was going around. Scanning your PC's drives is pretty fast, plenty thorough, and always current--unlike the years-old virus scanner that many people rely on. McAfee also offers free online tools that free up disk space, tune up your system, and more.

Free, Not Cheap

At the moment, there are just a handful of these free--and surprisingly competent--Web business access, hosting, and maintenance services. More are undoubtedly on the way. Putting a business online and keeping it there could soon be affordable for almost anyone.

Editor's note: At press time, search engine AltaVista just announced AltaVista FreeAccess, completely free 56Kbps Internet access. See Product News on page 10 for the story.

© 1999 Matt Lake. All rights reserved.

Matt Lake has racked up experience in three major corporations and one branch of the government. He currently heads up a small business near Philadelphia. You can reach him at mattlake@usa.net.

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