While the original idea behind
Geocities was to provide
free webspace, the creators realized they could still make some money with this site. Thus GeoPlus was born.
For $4.95/month, participants were given a small set of benefits aimed at those using their page for business purposes. While most Geocities URLs were long enough to make the reader dizzy - http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/UnionSquare/5692 - GeoPlus members received a shorter URL: http://www.geocities.com/~mypage or something similar. Ads were removed from their pages, and they were given a few extra megabytes of disk space.
Now that Geocities has been purchased by Yahoo!, anyone can have the short-form URL. Today, GeoPlus members spend $4.95/month on 25MB of disk space, up to 2500 ad-free page views, and dedicated support.