We recently registered a new domain name for Kevin the Collie’s website, after it had been establishing itself through a subdomain for several months. Looking back, it would have been better to register a domain from the start, but initially we thought the site was just going to be a hobby. Work went into his blog on dog training as well, and that has a good readership. At the end of last year I saw an offer for free domain names with no tie-in from a UK domain registrar - I am not going to name them, I don’t want them to benefit from the backlink.
Of course I took it, hoping to save some cash. Big mistake! I could not get the domains moved to my web hosting company DNS servers. I have done this before with other domains from other registrars so I know I was following the instructions. Despite numerous help tickets being raised with the Help Desk the action was aborting every time. In the end I simply left the for the 60 day period to pass, after which I moved them to my usual domain name registrar. To move the domains I had to pay their usual fee, so in the end I saved nothing and got loads of hassle in the process. The moral is: free domains are never worthwhile. For $8 you can avoid all this hassle and start establishing the website from day one.