Hello Papabear,
welcome to the Knowledgesutra forums, I am sure you will have a good time here.
About paying for your webspace hosting, well, I would certainly call it "free" in a way.
you can, if you wish to do so, pay with real money, and if you do, the charges are still very reasonable, especially when I look at what you get for your money, and certainly when I compare to what other hosting companies charge.
What you can also do, of course, is post in the forums here regularly and earn credits via "MyCents".
It adds up quickly when you post regularly, and every time you reach a whole dollar, that gets added to your credit.
The first option is paying $10 (which you can do, as I said earlier, with real money, or with your MyCents credits) and then pay nothing for another 10 years.
It offers the basics for beginning webmasters, but the charge is more than reasonable.
Another good one is the Logic Plan at $1.95 per month where you get a number of greta features, such as 5 MySQL Databases, 5 Addon and 5 Parked domains and 5 FTP accounts.
For just a bit more, $6.66 per month you get a big upgrade on the previous, such as more web space, more bandwidth, more Databases etc.
All you need to do is, when you have enough credits for the first payment of whatever you wish to buy, apply for webspace with Xisto and await approval, then you are good to go, build and upload your website, and keep posting so you earn enough credits to make your payment when the time is due.
For further information about how to apply for your hosting, have a look
here.
This is about hosting with subdomains, but it is a simple thing to use your own domain as an addon or parked domain.
Anyway, as i said before, welcome here and hope you have lots of pleasure both here and with your own acquired webspace.