So, so often one hears the derisive comments to the effect that "It's a free service: beggars can't be choosers."

To which I counter, No, it isn't really free. If I use it, I must invest a certain amount of my time and energy working with it. If it's going to be more trouble than profit for me, why should I bother?

Moreover, the motivations both avowed and secret of the "free service" provider come into the equation. Most "free" services weren't intended to be mere works of charity, or they quickly lost that motivation as they were gobbled up by other companies in the swelling of the latest bubble.

Consider the experience of those who use "free" webhosts and mail services. They're only "free" because they require that the user carry massive amounts of advertising, for which the host is in fact getting paid. —Or was, until this inept practice was revealed to be the inefficient media it is.

(FWIW, I am personally rather smug that I called banner exchanges as an utterly unviable economic model when I was first introduced to the internet back in 1996-97, for reasons of simple psychology: I'm not the only person I know who tears out ad pages from magazines (especially the cardboard insert ones) and folds over particularly obnoxious ones if they can't be removed so as to be able to read without distractions. Even if I'm at all interested I don't drop the article and run out to look for the product, which is the system that a banner click to take one to another site puts faith in.)

Which in turn brought about a new model, the paid upgrade. This is what happened to Hotmail, Homestead, and scads of others. When it's there from the start, when customers have at the outset, the option of taking a crippleware version for free or a higher-end full-featured version for a fee, no one resents it that I know of. But what happened in these cases was this: the originators dreamed that they would make a fortune off their advertising, enough to cover the costs of the service and then much more than some, and so they promised "free everything" to entice people to start carrying their flyers.

Because that's whats going on when you use a "free" service that "forces" adds — your homepage is the online equivalent of a mass-mailer or a newspaper insert, and you're delivering it to people by the means of your content. It's in the "free service" hosts' interests to have as many people using their services as possible and to have their pages be as popular as possible.

Sounds cynical? Think about it. Print advertising is expensive. Here are all these free little niche magazines being run by hobbyists, and we can put ads in them, and we'll get rich! We don't have to pay print/paper/binding costs, or worry about rising bulk postage rates!

Problem was, there were a lot of foolish optimists who didn't "reckon the costs" first and "visionaries" who didn't envision any outcome possible but a best-case scenario.

There's a line in the Scriptures about sitting down before you start a building project and analyzing the costs and determining whether you're going to have the funds for it before you start digging the foundations, and what kind of idiot wouldn't do that, now?

Ans: dotcom hopefuls.

They too were looking to get something for nothing, or for very little. They overestimated how well the banner exchanges and popups would work on readers, and they underestimated how many people would want to use their products.

Thus they ended up underfunded and overcommitted. So, some of them folded, and others refused to lesser degrees to honor their commitments, and/or attempted to get funds from their users as well. (There are marketing schemes like this, btw, where you're required to buy a certain amount of the product you sell. It's not all that different from those pyramid outfits.)

Now, obviously they couldn't go broke, and I don't expect them to. But I do mock them for not thinking through before starting, and for not anticipating the backlash and loss of good will from their users when they suddenly started announcing, "We told you it was free, but, well, we lied. If you want to keep your web site/ftp account/account features, you have to shell up."

This particularly annoyed users when after doing so, because of further lack of vision, the companies still went belly-up, often without warning, causing users to lose things. This was a particular problem with the attempt to create online storage systems, the idea being that people who couldn't afford a backup solution of their own could make use of this for files or photos, a year or so ago.

(Before voicing scorn at all those who believed in such follies as "unlimited bandwidth/unlimited space," remember that their unreasonable expectations were based on the unreasonable promises of the providers targetting the inexperienced, who in turn believed their own unreasonable expectations were reality, and created a strange situation in which the con artist was also the conned victim. There are of course those whose expectations are entirely unreasonable — one sees it in retail all the time from paying customers as well — but that's not what was happening, in this context.)

But what about those who really were/are works of love, done not for profit, in which ads are merely the way the provider scrapes along? Well, that's tricky. First of all, without special access, you can't know who's doing it as a real act of charity, and who's also going, "—and we can get rich doing this, too!" Not until they either go bust, with an apologetic note about how this has gotten too expensive to run out of a garage, or sell out, like Angelfire.

So I have to address the issues involved from an abstract standpoint: there are three possible motivations/rewards for the "free service" provider.

If you are really doing it for love, then reward shouldn't come into it at all. Just for the good of anonymous others, who may or may not be grateful. Not even the glory of it. Because that's what it comes down to, the payoff — reknown, honor, being known across the 'net for having done something, being sung by strangers, having one's praises on the lips of the multitude, or fingertips at least. One should, in fact, do it as anonymously and undemandingly as a silent donor to a charity.

But in ruthless honesty, we all do it in some measure for the glory. Even I, though I deliberately make Odd Lots as impersonal as possible, considering that while it's built upon my own eclectic tastes, the point is to serve those with similar, overlapping interests (all or some), not to create a personality cult, and make not a denarius from it. One has the knowledge that one has Made A Difference, in some small way.

(Yet another reason, somewhere between profit and non, is self-promotion, showcasing work the same way an artist donates a picture or statue to a charity auction: both for the cause itself, and to create a wider awareness, and future commissions. Which itself is incentive enough, or should be, to do the best possible job simply for practical reasons.)

However, you can't, very simply put, retain any glory or laud if you don't do a halfway decent job of it. Foisting slovenly work upon your users is going to garner you scorn, and the agora is a noisy place, and the complaints are going to be heard far and wide — and deservedly so.

Not because of an "impure" motive in doing your charitable work in the hope of being recognized, on some level, but because if you provide a "free service" that is in fact more trouble and doesn't give what you promise — you're in a very real sense robbing your users of their time and costing them in stress. It's rather like offering someone a ride to the airport, not showing up, and then after they've had to struggle with taxis, buses, or hiked, saying, "Well, you weren't being charged anything, so you can't complain." People rely on your word, and are left in the lurch.

You've given them a White Elephant, in fact. And there are plenty of those who will defend the givers of White Elephants, saying it's a princely gift, you can't complain if it eats up all your resources and you can't use it. I'm not one of them.

And not simply because of the injustice to users involved: it is a matter of purest folly to refuse to interact with your following, even if it's simply to explain that — we're sorry, but what you're asking isn't possible for X reason, or — Yes, we know there's a problem, and we're not sure what it is,* in a timely fashion —Do it long enough, and you won't have a following any more.

If you're the only show in town, you may feel you can do this with impunity: Quark Xpress (though by no means free) gets away with treating customers like dirt, charging in one past experience $35 up front (non refundable) to say, "Yes, that's a bug, you have to upgrade your OS and hardware to fix it," because there is no single other program out there that works as well for the critical things Quark does. We in printing and prepress use it, and curse Quark, without feeling or being hypocritical at all. And when the day comes that there is a rival that actually performs in the ways it promised (vale InDesign, vale Pagemaker) rest assured that Quark will either have to clean up their act or see their profits drop through the floor.

And if you're really looking to make money off of it — or even to break even — by encouraging people to move from your "free" service to a paid upgrade (as ffnet attempts) it's suicidal to provide such an appallingly bad customer service that not even your strongest supporters can say anything except "What do you expect?" while simultaneously asserting, "Trust me! Give us money, and we'll treat you right." Users are going to be doubtful — and does anyone really wonder why?

Or to put it very simply, in terms applicable to many other areas of life: if you want loyalty, you have to give it as well. And if you want to be paid, you have to give value for it. Even if the only pay you seek is good will.

Caveat emptor: I will remain a choosy beggar, and be wary of White Elephants in disguise, and warn others against them when I find them.