On this page I would like to share with you all the things that I use (and why I do) and all the things I maybe once used and don’t use them again or wanted to use them but didn’t (and why not).

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Because this is a blog about Passive Income Experiment I kindly ask you not to be angry at me if you come across an affiliate link provide beside tools that are not free of charge. Buying these products by clicking on my links will not cause you any additional expenses. In some (or most) cases you can even get a (not so small) discount if you purchase any product through these types of link (I will specifically point out where this is the case). Thank you for your understanding.

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I believe you can do just fine without any tools that you need to pay for (or that I paid for). But sometimes If you want to stand out or overtake your competition these tools may be the ticket for a better and faster ride. Beside each tool I will try to explain how you can get along for free and why I chose not to. Again, the last thing I want to do with this page is force you to buy products or services that you actually do not need.

Paid vs. Free Hosting plan (and why I chose Arvixe* for my hosting provider)

Paid hosting plan vs. Free hosting plan is probably one of the most frequently asked questions that newbies are coping with. To answer this question you have to ask yourself what do you want from your own online presence. If you are writing and creating your content just for fun, to fulfill your free time or you just love to write, then I guess the free hosting plan and free domain (or better subdomain) is totally fine. But If you are in pursuit for a little bit more and would like to make some kind of extra income out of your (hard) work like me, then I suggest you opt in for a paid hosting plan and domain of your choice.

As I see it (from a beginner perspective) the main advantages of paid hosting are:

• you select your own domain name (this is also a head start it terms of SEO and search engine ranking)
• with a free hosting provider you get very limited features for building your site while with paid option I guess the sky is the limit
• you OWN your domain and your content – no one can dictate you what and how to write
• your content will be online as long as YOU want

This point mostly relates to Squidoo, where I tested my writing and page building skills with so called lenses. I put a huge amount of time and effort into it and then they shut the site down.  Or, better put, they sold it to a competitor HubPages. What I mean is you have zero influence towards the existence of such type of website.

• many free providers have a list of prohibited topics that you can write about (adult content, weight loss, network marketing,…)
• mostly you are unable to serve the ads with free web hosting; however, if you are offered with the possibility of earning from let’s say Adwords or from selling through Amazon affiliate store, for example, they will (completely logical, but worth mentioning) take a certain percentage of everything you make
• credibility towards your readers / customers – to whom you personally tend to trust more, someone with domain something.yourdomain (or something.com/yourdomain) or yourdomain.com?

In the end, the choice is yours. Since I know that my purpose is also passive income, I decided to get a paid hosting. What did I choose?

Arvixe. Why? I read a lot of reviews and comparison charts and realized there is no such thing like a perfect hosting provider. In fact, I did not find any megalomaniac differences between the major hosting players.

My decision was based on the comments and reviews of “independent” evaluators and I do not remember to read any negative reviews about Arvixe . On the other hand it is not hard to find bad reviews about maybe two largest players BlueHost and HostGator. I do not want to do injustice to those two (especially since I have zero personal experience with them), I am only trying to represent the feeling I got when I was searching for “the best WordPress hosting provider”.

Maybe the odds additionally turned in favor of Arvixe, when I read an article (unfortunately I do not remember the source) about site speed of pages on different shared hosting plans and Arvixe won with a huge advantage (it had the shortest page loading time of all tested plans). I am convinced that the loading speed of your website is a big factor for users, and slow sites are very distracting and losing a lot of users visiting the site.

My Arvixe hosting plan looks like this (WordPress PersonalClaas plan on shared web hosting):

• unlimited disk space (the amount of space that will be occupied by the content of my website/-s)
• unlimited monthly data transfer (how much data my website receives and sends)
• 6 websites / domains (this is the only point I hesitated a little about this provider because competition often offers unlimited websites, but then I realized that for the short term I cannot create more than 2 or 3 quality sites)
• free domain for life (one of the biggest advantages as I see so far, competition mainly offers free domain for 1 year)
• 60 days money back guarantee (one of the longest money back period available If for any reason I will not be satisfied with the service)

I decided for a 2-year package which is, recalculated on a monthly expense, the most favorable. The normal price is 96 USD (or 4 USD per month).

If you decide to use promo code PIEARVIXE20 made specifically for my readers, you will get the additional 20% discount so the price you pay decreases to only 3,20 USD per month + you get a free domain of your choice for life (or as long as you stay with this hosting provider).

I thank you for stopping by and wish you all the best with your successful online fairy tale.

*Please not that the above banner and the Arvixe word in the title are affiliate links and that I will earn some commission if you buy your hosting plan by clicking on those links. Doing that will not cause you any additional expenses. If you use promo code stated above (PIEARVIXE20) you are entitled to 20% discount.