If you have been on the internet for any length of time looking at business options you will eventually come across someone promoting GDI to you. So this article is to answer some of the basic questions about GDI. Is this Business opportunity a scam? Do they have a product or service that is worthwhile? What is the potential of this opportunity? I will seek to answer these questions as objectively as possible.

Scam!?

If you have come to this article you are probably already considering whether GDI is a serious business opportunity or a scam! To determine if GDI is a scam the first question one must ask is are they marketing a worthwhile product or service or are they just another MLM or pyramid designed to take your money without giving you anything other than promises of great rewards and riches? The answer yes they have a genuine product/ service. In this case web hosting.

The Service Outlined

They provide a web hosting service. It is true you can get free website hosting on the net, in fact this very article is an example of a free web host and you can get good results from them, but there are a number of things you sacrifice.

Firstly if you are using a free web host provider there is always some form of cost, normally they require you to carry free ads on your site. (web1000 is an exception but you can’t even put banners on it and its editor is painful to use).

While having ads on your website at first this may not seem to be a problem, consider this, if you want this site to be your main business portal and hub, you may end up advertising your biggest competitor, not a smart move. You don’t have ownership of your site. You may own the intellectual material but if the free web hoster changes their rules, goes out of business or just updates the way their system works there is not a thing you can do about it. Even with blogger you have to share your AdSense revenue with them 50-50. That’s why I recommend if you are serious about having an online business your main site be one that you own and that means paying for it. Also after I lost 48 blogs overnight because blogger felt they didn’t all fit with their terms of service you learn – you get what you pay for.

In the case of GDI this means $10 a month. That’s US Dollars, so if you are in Australia like me, thats not so good, if you operate in Euro’s or pounds, that’s great for you. For that you get a web site, 10 pages (plus a feedback and guest page 12 total), 10 e-mail addresses and a domain name, its also includes a domain/site builder, domain and e-mail forwarding, use your own web builder, parking service. However each page can have a huge amount of data. The 10 e-mail address means if you have 10 different businesses, affiliates programs or whatever you can devote an individual e-mail to each one and can with the forward even arrange to have them forwarded to a single box.

The other great advantage is the ability to choose a domain name. Most of the good .com names are long since gone. Further in the case of many of the other endings like .au, .us, .uk, etc many companies exist solely in buying up the best domain names to make a killing selling them to someone else at highly inflated prices. GDI with the .ws avoids this pitfall by ensuring the domain name is not sold as a separate entity, but only with the web hosting service. This stops domain name hording in its tracks. .ws is still new and now is the time to get the domain name you want. No additional $20 yearly fee for just the domain name registration.

The Business Opportunity

The fact is not everyone out there needs a web host. Let’s examine why one has a website. Normally one either has a website for one of two reasons – BUSINESS or PERSONAL.

In the case of personal websites many people want their own personal e-mail addresses and have a website for a number of reasons, stay in touch with family with an open letter, express their beliefs or opinions on a world stage, to satisfied their own ego and sense of importance, create photo albums, join a community, etc. Some people will pay the $10 a month to have a website. As time progresses I think this will increase as more and more people become web aware and want to have their own address/ place on the web. With the highly transitive nature of the human population with greater movement than ever before in the history of the world one of the best ways people will be able to stay in contact with friends will be via the net. Consider how many people from school do you know twenty years later. Have you moved city, state, country, if you have you probably have lost contact with them. If you wanted to track them down how would you? I know I would do it via the web. This will be increasingly easy as people have personal web pages.

In the case of a website for Businesses most companies have a website for further advertising their company, some do have direct sales as well over the net, and some are nothing but internet based businesses, e.g. Ebay. In the case of a website for a business, I would think that what GDI offers is not big enough to meet their needs. Save for a landing page, redirect page or just the Domain name, GDI is aimed at the small internet business user. Thats not necessarily a bad thing but it is fact that has a bearing on the business opportunity. If GDI wants to grow further they will need to look at offering reasonable upgrade packages for the bigger players.

In the case of a small first time business wanting their own website with six pages GDI is not a bad option as it also gives them a source of secondary income.

It has the potential to be a good source of income as each person you bring in gets you $1 a month. Not a huge amount really, you would need 10 people just to pay for you hosting fee, but the winner here its that you get a $1 for each person they introduce down to five levels, the power to leverage the work of those below you is what appeals here. That can result in some good returns. You won’t become a millionaire over night, but you can have a great income stream.

You might be thinking, I’m too late and missed the GDI wave. No I don’t think so, not at this time this article is written. GDI members now are in the tens of thousands, not until its reaches 100’s of millions will the wave subside. I don’t think new customers will ever complete dry up either, because each year more and more tech savvy students finish school, and they brought up to believe they each need their own modern gadgets, including mobile phones, e-mailing, and even their own personal website. For kids who are spending $50 plus a month on mobile phones alone, $10 a month for their own website is nothing. I’m waiting for the day you no longer send in a resume into a prospective employer but just give them your web address and they can look up your life themselves. Thus I think the potential of GDI is long term, yes after the initial wave there will be an eventual slowing – there is no such thing as an infinite possibility – there are 6 Billion people on the planet, once the majority of them is a customer you have reach the finite limit. Any company unless they have plans to further develop a service or introduce new products knows a market does reach a saturation point where growth slows. Not so good for an MLM company as their customers are also their business partners. Any MLM that wants to succeed must either sell a product the needs replacement over time – i.e. tupperware (where did I leave that lid, oh well time to another party and order another), or offer new services or products to the same downlines.

There are numerous ways to advertise GDI online. I myself am no great salesman. I hate cold calling, I hate door knocking, I hate feeling like I am invading someone personal space or coming across as pushy. That’s why I love internet advertising. The buyer is in total control, no pushy salesman, don’t like the sales pitch go to another site. There are several program set up to advertise GDI for you, programs like turbo GDI and Hits2U, both are cost effective.

In summary, if you need a web host, GDI is a option, particularly in relation to Domain names, if you don’t need a web host and don’t know someone else who does then its probably not for you.

By: Alastair Harris