123-reg.co.uk

Two domain extensions dominate the UK market. These are .co.uk and .com. And you probably know why: it’s because those two domain extensions are the ones people in the UK type in first when they’re looking for something.

However, there are loads of other domain extensions available too. And with ICANN’s forthcoming liberalisation of the domain market, we can expect to see a whole load more appearing in the next couple of years.

If you’ve never thought about registering other domain extensions before, it’s worth investigating. Sure, you might conclude that your website doesn’t need them. But equally, you might be able to use  them to capture more traffic, or target specific markets.

So here are a few reasons you should consider other domain names:

It shows international customers that you’re serious

If you’re running an online shop which allows international customers to purchase from you, consider registering local versions of your domain name. For instance, if you expect the products you sell to be popular in Italy, you could consider registering yourdomain.it.

If you don’t want to register loads of country-specific domains, but do plan to offer your goods internationally, you could consider a .eu extension instead. This extension for the European Union could help identify your business as one which is happy to do business across Europe. Read the rest of this entry »

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I don’t think Ajaz Ahmed would mind me saying that he isn’t a household name. But perhaps he should be. After all, you could argue that he did more to bring the internet to the general British public than almost anyone else.

That’s because he came up with the idea of Freeserve, the first free internet service provider (ISP) in the UK.

The pay as you go internet

The idea for Freeserve came to Ajaz after struggling to find an ISP who could help him get online. Back in 1998, internet service providers were geared towards technical people. “Nobody could tell me how to get on the internet,” explains Ajaz, who eventually managed to get online using a CD from a PC magazine cover.

Once connected, he started to understand the huge potential of the web. That was when what he describes it as his “famous eureka moment” happened. He was a Dixons store manager at the time. “If I was having trouble getting online,” he says, “then so were our customers”.

Ajaz also realised that the perfect time to offer people an internet connection is when they’re buying a computer. As one of the biggest computer retailers at the time, Dixons (plus sister chains Currys and PC World) had the ability to reach a huge number of potential customers, without spending anything extra on advertising.

In retrospect, it seems obvious, but when Ajaz first approached the PC World management, they just weren’t interested. It took a pitch to the group’s CEO, who eventually agreed to give it a go. Read the rest of this entry »

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Type “make cash online” into Google and you’ll probably be inundated with all manner of shonky get rich quick schemes. But even in these credit crunchy days, there are legitimate ways to earn a few extra pounds using the internet.

It’s unlikely that any of these ideas will make you a life-changing amount of money, but they’re a good way to generate some readies with relatively little effort.

1. Put some adverts on your blog or website.
Even if you only have a modest level of traffic, you could make some pocket money by signing up to a program like Google AdSense. These advertising systems automatically analyse your website and display relevant advertising.

You earn money every time a visitor clicks an advert on your site. It might pay for your hosting – or if you get lots of visitors, it could make you significantly more.
Beginners’ guide to Google AdSense >

2. Run an online shop in your spare time.
Actually, if you do this one right, it could make you quite a bit of cash. A great way to start trading online is to do it in your spare time, and to sell something that you’re knowledgeable or passionate about.

If it takes off … well, it could become a full time job. And as it doesn’t take much effort to get started (just decide what to sell, then set up an online shop with an ecommerce package), you don’t have much to lose.
More online shop tips >

3. Get cashback when you buy online.
One of the web’s best kept secrets is that you can often claim cashback on items you buy. All you have to do is visit a cashback site, then follow a link from there to the shop you’re buying from. The cashback site gets paid commission for your purchase, which it passes on to you.

I’m a big fan of Quidco, but there are other cashback sites too, including Top Cashback and Cashback Kings. I saved £40 on a laptop from Dell last year and nearly £100 on a holiday, so it’s definitely worth signing up to one of these sites, then using them whenever you buy something online.
Beginners’ guide to cashback sites > Read the rest of this entry »

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As it’s 2009 (a New Year and all that) we’ve decided to introduce a new feature to the blog.

We’re going to run a regular Q&A piece, offering advice about building websites, running a business, choosing domain names … all the usual stuff we cover on here.

But this time we’re inviting you to send us your questions. Each time round we’ll pick some of the most interesting and post the answers up right here.

Between us we have an awful lot of experience of building and running websites, so it’s your chance to get your questions answered by some experts.

It could be something that’s been bugging you for months, a practical problem you encountered that day or just something you’ve been idly wondering about.

We can’t promise to answer all the questions we receive, but we’ll certainly pick a few of the most interesting and publish the best answers we can, right here. It’s sort of like ‘Dear Deirdre’ but for internet stuff.

For the first go, please send us your queries on search engine optimisation (SEO). Maybe you want to know how to decide which keywords to target, or how to measure your site’s current performance.

Whatever it is, you can pose your question right now. Just leave a comment on this post. Remember, it can be anything at all to do with SEO.

Once we’ve received a few queries, we’ll publish answers to the most interesting ones. So hit the comment link now.

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Some readers of this blog will already be Linux aficionados, but for many people Linux is still technology they only have passing familiarity with.  This week The Register asks whether 2009 will be a good year for Linux.

My initial reaction was that expressed in many of the article’s comments: a yawning lack of interest at yet another year being tipped as Linux’s coming of age, something which somebody in the tech media seems to have predicted every January for the past decade — with as boring regularity as the mainstream press run December articles on how online Christmas shopping is really taking off.

But for once there is actually an interesting point behind the question.  Linux is well known for being free software — sometimes labelled software libre, to emphasize that “free” is about freedom rather than being free of charge.  However, regardless of your political views on the open source movement, such software generally is free in the price sense as well, and that’s what becomes more relevant in the credit crunch. Read the rest of this entry »

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Good branding can really help your business. But explaining what branding is and why it’s important can be tricky. For many people, a brand starts and stops with the company logo – yet actually it reaches much further than that.

I’ve stumbled on an article which works as an excellent introduction to branding. It’s on Fritinancy, a blog run by Nancy Friedman. Nancy has reviewed the branding efforts of Changing the Present, a US organisation. Read the article here.

Even though it’s about a US business, the piece is worth reading because it’s an excellent introduction to branding and the elements which make up a good brand. And it uses a real world example, so it’s really easy to follow.

Domain names are important

One of the things Nancy highlights is how your choice of domain name affects your brand:

“Let’s say you’re impressed, as I was, by the CTP commercial but remember the organization’s name as Change the Present instead of Changing the Present. Do you get a 404 error message when you type “ChangeThePresent.org” into your browser? You do not. You get a variation of the Changing the Present home page, with videos of the two TV commercials. I can’t overempahsize how smart it is of Changing the Present to anticipate this mistake and turn it into an opportunity; too few website owners do it.”

We’ve talked about this exact same issue before. If people remember your domain name incorrectly, you risk losing them as visitors – unless you register some alternative domain names too. Go here for our advice on how to decide which ones you need.

Further information

• Read the branding article at Fritinancy
• How the BBC’s Dragons’ Den highlighted an example of bad domain name branding

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Over the festive period, Fast Company published an interesting piece wondering what will happen if ICANN releases a bunch of new domain name extensions later this year. (For the backstory, see our summary of the proposals.)

Calling it “the end of the dot-com world”, the somewhat controversial piece basically says that the creation of new TLDs (top level domains – like .com) is going to cause a headache for, well, everyone really.

It will, the article claims, lead to a “rebirth of cyber squatting” – the practice of buying up domains which are close to well-known trademarks and making money from them, either by flogging the domains to the trademark holder, or by running advertising on the site found at the domain. Read the rest of this entry »

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