Yes,

www.myfamilyhistorybook.co.uk has a free beginners guide and lots of links to other free sites as well. Good luck with your research.

Yes, there actually are! The most informative one is the Morman site. The Church of the Latter Day Saints have actually been doing family genealogy longer than anyone else. They have transcribed more records than any other group in the US.

Several sites will give you access to some information. Then they will want payment to get the 'rest of the story'. I've worked on genealogy for a long time and I've never paid for my info. You want to gather the free info online. When it gets to the part about pay now for more..start a new search elsewhere. Another site will have the same info..Free.
Rootsweb and Cyndi's List are two others that are great for free info.

Ancestry.com is NOT free and a poor recommendation. Very little of value can be determined there unless you have a subscription! :( However, I understand that lots of public libraries are subscribed and perhaps you could access the site from your local library.

The free website to search the Latter Day Saints genealogy info is familysearch.org. It has been quite helpful to me. What is especially helpful is the fact that they keep adding continuously to their online database AND actual records. To take it a step further, you can also go to one of their temples to do free research-- they keep quite extensive records, and you'll find more in person than on the internet. They are extremely helpful.

Other sites you may find helpful at NO charge are deadfred.com, and rootsweb.com. Deadfred has photos of dead ancestors to search through, and rootsweb is broken down by region and has links to all the right archival and historical sites you'll need to search for various ancestors. Aside from that there are also family tree and pedigree search options, user submitted, which are very helpful. Usually you can also find the user's e-mail address if you need to talk to them about more details or fact verification, etc. :)

There are numerous websites available for those who are trying to trace their family tree that do not cost anything to search. Ancestry.com does have an expensive price and a lot of the information they provide can be found elsewhere on the Internet and searched at no cost.

You can check Rootsweb.com which is an excellent free resource and one of the best is http://www.cyndislist.com/ which provides links to many areas of research for those tracing their family tree.

One useful site you need to become familiar with is familysearch.org which also has a massive free database for genealogical research.

Those are the large websites that you should look into, but the number of free and useful smaller sites available that cover different countries, states, cities, towns that can definite help.

There are too many to mention, but a tool that I absolutely love will eventually lead you to most resources on the internet, both free and paid, is the Google Genealogy Search Site. They are:

Ancestor Search by Google: http://www.searchforancestors.com/google/searcher. html, and
Google Genealogy Search Page: http://www.genealogy-search-help.com (for input of names for global internet search).

I have found so much using these.

There are more obscure records though that this might not produce. It's also a good idea to search universities, parishes, civil records offices and libraries in the areas of your search, both online and in person if possible.