Beware of free DNS services

Businesses come in all shapes and forms. Many small businesses are sole traders, often working on a shoestring budget. When businesses of this size first create a web presence it is often done on free services like Geocities or Blogspot. Sometimes this is because they are trying to minimize costs, and sometimes it is because they wandered into a web presence by accident. Although I am an IT professional, and have my own cheap hosting, this blog started as a very personal diary that I later split into three, distributing the back articles; one of the child blogs is decidedly business related. Once a blog or mini-site becomes part of a business' identity it really needs to be under the business' branding and this usually means having its own domain name to build recognition of the business, avoid confusion with the other sites on the free host, and present a more professional image.