I used to give free hosting to Indian bloggers and startups. (More bloggers took me up on the offer than startups though.) Tips from my experience: * I kept

I used to give free hosting to Indian bloggers and startups. (More bloggers took me up on the offer than startups though.) Tips from my experience: * I kept it as a first-come-first-serve thing. I didn't want to become the judge out there. * But I kept a rule from the beginning: people had to move once they became ramen profitable. * There was no other rule except the obvious: don't abuse the resource. It worked well. * The only problem I faced is: quite a lot of people who took me up on the free hosting offer didn't do anything with it for months. Didn't put up a single web page online. And only used email. It was free. So they procrastinated. And weren't as aggressive as they would be if they had to pay for hosting. * So if I were to repeat my offer, I would add Rule # 2: their website or beta has to be up within 2 weeks. (Also to weed out people who wouldn't use the free hosting after getting it - I started relying on how good they were with follow up. I usually asked a question on their first request. Once they answered that, I asked another question. And only then did I gave the hosting. Its amazing how many non-serious people drop out by that stage. These questions were basic ones: who is going to be your target audience? How many people in your team? Anything to just see their response reaction.)