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After a 2hour Skype session with my mate at UnekeFurniture.com discussing how we are going to re-design his site and what social media can do for his online marketing, I was really inspired to hear his story, which I will share with you below.

My mate was looking to set up a home theatre in his house and was researching products, after a bit of time on Google he stumbled across a home stereo enthusiasts forum. After jumping in and taking a look around grabbing some good information about products and different configurations. He decided to start a new thread, “What do you think should be in the perfect entertainment unit?” Now here is the thing, my mate makes custom furniture and it is hot stuff (check out his site).

Not thinking anything of it apart from getting some information about what these guys would like in a cabinet, which he could build into his. Within under an hour there were 37 replies all from people with great ideas, my mate jumped in as part of the conversation offering his thoughts, suggestions and alternatives to other ideas from an expert cabinet makers point of view and the community really took to it.

Within a couple of days of being a member of the site, he had many enquiries and additional traffic to his site and within a couple of days had booked a job, making a perfect entertainment unit. Now this wasn’t the intent of his post, nor being on the forum in the first place, but what a great outcome.

This was very interesting to me, this story highlighted the value of social media and building your online networks. Getting involved in community forums is a great way of referral promoting your products and/or services. Being an active member of an online community can help you to learn new techniques in your industry, share your information, engage directly with consumers to find out what they like, desire and think they would pay for and like Twitter be known for being an expert in your field. Im not advocating spamming online communities, though I feel if you have something to contribute you could see benefits to your business, be it in selling products or simply gaining a new perspective.

What I would like most to share out of this story is just how little effort and money it took for my mate to promote his services that resulted in a sale. Word of Mouth or referral marketing is a powerful tool for you business and shouldn’t be under-estimated. Our business was built on it, still to this day we do not pay for over priced advertising and 101 Web Technology continues to grow. Lets Skype sometime or follow me on Twitter @phil_at_101 to find out what social marketing can do for your businesses bottom line.

When building a new or re-developing an existing website, there is one question we at 101 Web Technology always ask our client.

How much time do you have available to keep this website updated?

As I have written about in other articles “Keeping your site fresh” and “Whats your site up to?” we know that keeping a website regularly maintained is like servicing your car. Yes it will run with old oil and half worn tyres. The old faithful will still get you to the shops and home, drop the kids at school. However would you trust the car to take you around Australia? Some would, though we wouldn’t.

The fact is if you want your website to go the extra miles and really give you a return on investment, then you need to invest into the site yourself. The biggest investment as business owners is time. Time is the one factor that is not tax deductible, time is one factor that you can’t make back. As business owners we do tend to like to save costs and think, yes we can do it ourselves, but are we going to do the same job as a professional? Are we going to remember to dot the i’s and cross the t’s?

When updating a website it is often not only a matter of making the small content changes, but having a holistic view and understanding of your web presence? Updating your content is only a very small part of keeping your website finely tuned. I liken it to changing your cars oil and not using a new filter. Yes you have new oil, but is it effective as it could be?

Keeping a website finely tuned does take time and effort. A Content Management System (CMS) is a great tool to get you off and running updating your own website content with little to no web programming skills and yes its true, if you want simple updates to your site, making them yourself makes sense. However what we find is our clients don’t have time to update the website themselves, we find their websites haven’t been touched sometimes over 24months since we launched the site. Would you not have serviced your car at least once in that same amount of time? In comparison clients making use of our website maintenance packages are more proactive with site updates, usually an email is sent with images, Word or PDF attachments with instructions on what they want the new/updated page to look like. Updates are made within 24hours of the request and the client has saved themselves the time and effort by having the professional look after their website. The client knows that their search engine ranking is being considered by a professional after each change, the site will be 100% error free. Simply it just works the best it can and your site has been tuned.

101 Fact: 9 out of 10 CMS we have deployed (good mix of both Joomla, WordPress and Adobe Contribute), due to time constraints we end up making the changes on behalf of the client.

While these CMS products are great at what they do there are limitations on them and a good web development company will be able to let you know what those limitations are and provide you a range of options that best suit your requirements, budget and availability of time.

The auDA’s New 2LDs Advisory Panel has released a Discussion Paper inviting comments on:

• new 2LDs in general; and
• proposals for new 2LDs, conf.au and info.au.

The closing date for submissions is Sunday 23 May 2010.

For more information please see http://www.auda.org.au/new2ldsap/new2ldsap-index/

There are two ways in which you can comment on the issues raised in the paper.

1. Send a written submission to:

Jo Lim
Chief Policy Officer, auDA
email: jo.lim@auda.org.au
fax: 03 8341 4112

Electronic submissions are preferred. All submissions will be posted on the auDA website within 2 working days of receipt, unless clearly marked confidential.

The closing date for submissions is Sunday 23 May 2010.

2. Complete the online survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3GWKKM9 .

the auDA (Australian Domain Administration) will be releasing their new domain name drop process as of 18 April 2010.

The following changes are made to the Domain Renewal, Expiry and Deletion Policy

• expired and deleted .au domain names will be published on the Official Domain Drop List at the time when they become “eligible for purge”

• eligible expired and deleted domain names will be purged from the registry at 1.00pm AEST (2.00pm AEDT) every day, including weekends and public holidays.

The changes will be implemented during a scheduled registry outage on 18 April 2010. The Official Domain Drop List will be published on the auDA website (linked from the homepage) at the end of the registry outage on 18 April 2010. The new purge time will commence the next day on 19 April 2010.

Essentially this change to the policy will have no impact to clients that renew domain names prior to the expiry date. Clients transferring to 101 Web Technology Domain Registration service should start the transfer process well before the domain expiry date. This takes into account the time it takes to go through a regular transfer of registrant which can take at least 48hours.

This is also a timely reminder to ensure that your associated registrant details are up to date for your domain. If contact details are incorrect especially email, then the domain may not be easily renewed and may lapse the reminder and expiry periods and you may lose your domain. You can check your details are up to date at http://domains.101webtech.com if you have a domain registered with us you can login to administer your domains, clients that have domains with other registrants can use our Whois lookup under Domain tools on http://domains.101webtech.com

If you have any questions or want to know specifics about the new policy and how it may affect you, get in touch or leave a comment below and we will get back to you.

Name Drive

NameDrive parking is a service whereby you can park your domain names free of charge. NameDrive then places targeted advertising on your parked domains and you earn money whenever visitors to your domains click on the ads. Advertisements are generated from marketing partners associated with NameDrive and you are paid a commission each time your domain is accessed and an ad is clicked. Content sensitive ads are displayed to the user of the domain in much the same way as how Google Adsense may work on your developed website.

Why would you use NameDrive? Many people when setting up a business or have a new business idea the first thing they do is purchase a domain name to protect the name and their online identity. As many people will know when you set up a new business getting a new website is not the first thing to happen or the development time may take a bit longer. You can use these in-between time to earn some more, especially if the domain name is a popular one.
Buy and Sell Domains

NameDrive offers its users the ability to buy and sell domain names. By signing up to the NameDrive service you can keep a look out for domain names that may be of use to your business or business idea. Likewise if you purchase a domain name that may have some commercial value you can offer the domain up for sale, while still parking the domain and earning revenue.

Many people when looking for a new domain name will go to there Internet Browser and try and access the domain name they want. If you have a popular domain, people could be doing thousands of domain lookups on your domain each day, each with the potential to click through on some of the targeted advertising.

For further information and to signup for NameDrive Domain Parking you can check out the website http://www.namedrive.com

101 Web Technology has launched a new client centre! The new client centre is available by selecting the “Support/Accounts” tab in the client login section (top left of page under 101 logo.) If you have not been sent your welcome email with your login information please contact us and we will arrange to have that information sent out to you. Alternatively there is a forgot password link to retrieve the password for the account.

So we can efficiently work on your requests the client centre allows you to easily lodge a support ticket for any issues you may run into with your hosting or for those clients on a maintainence package you can use the client centre to request updates to your website.

You may also use the support system to upload large files to our server, save the potential issues sending via email and much faster then snail mail.

Why register a domain name?

The answer is simply to protect your online identity at a cost effective price. Your domain name is your address on the internet and is the first step towards your online presence. The domain name provides you with an online identity or brand. Protecting your domain name or names is important in protecting your online identity. It’s a valuable part of your business identity and an invaluable marketing tool.

To gain the best advantage on the Internet you should consider registering your company name as well as any abbreviations along with any trademark of products and/or services. Abbreviations become more important if you have a long or difficult to spell business name.

For example: a three letter Domain name like www.xyz.com.au is far easier to remember than a long domain name or asking the user to type in a difficult to spell company name.

Further advantages to a short domain name is it can help when customers want to visit or revisit your site, if you have a short easy to remember domain name.

Am I eligible to register a domain name?

There are different rules for different domains as a general rule there is no restrictions on registering a .com domain name. However the downside is you may find it harder to purchase the domain name you are after in the .com space.
.AU

As a general rule 101 Web Technology provides the below advice to client wanting to purchase a .AU domain name.

To comply with auDA policies for the registration of .au domains, the domain name must be:

• exactly match, acronym or abbreviation of the registrant’s company or trading name, organization or association name or trademark, or
• otherwise closely and substantially connected to the registrant. 

If you wish to buy a .com.au or .net.au domain name, you must be a commercial entity and possess either an ACN or ABN. 

How do I buy a domain?

Easy, you can register your domain name with 101 Web Technology with the confidence that you are buying most of our domains up to 50% cheaper then some of our much larger competitors. We do this because we understand that having your own domain name doesn’t need to be an expensive cost added to your online presence.

101 Web Technology brings to you over 40 top level domain name extensions for you to choose from including many International Domain Names, so protecting your online identity has never been more convienent and cheaper.

If your website is not ready yet, when you register a domain name with 101 Web Technology you will recieve FREE DNS Management and URL Forwarding services. What this means to our clients is you can have email at your domain straight away and your domain name is protected for when you launch your new website.

Register your new domain name online at http://domains.101webtech.com

auDA is currently reviewing the Domain Expiry, Renewal and Deletion Policy . The policy is available on auDA’s website at http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2006-07/

auDA invites comment on all aspects of the policy, in particular:

• Whether the current 30 day pending delete period for expired domain names (ie. where the registrant has not renewed their domain name) is appropriate.
• Whether the current “domain purge” procedure (ie. where domain names are purged from the registry at a random time between 10.30am and 5.00pm AEST on the next business day after the pending delete period ends) is effective.
• What action (if any) auDA should take in relation to unofficial domain drop lists, and the domain-catching services being provided by some accredited registrars and other industry participants.

Comments should be sent to:

Jo Lim
Chief Policy Officer
email: jo.lim@auda.org.au
fax: 03 9349 5711

The closing date for submissions is Friday 11 September 2009.

All submissions will be published on auDA’s website at http://www.auda.org.au/reviews/red-2009/.