Starting a Business

Are you starting, or thinking about starting a business?

We have a lot of customers who are only just starting business, have a limited budget and limited knowledge about what they need to do first when it comes to the internet.

Website

Firstly, you don’t need a website immediately – this can come later when you are ready or when budget permits. You need to have your business plan, information about your services and products decided first.

Writing content for a website is a daunting and very time consuming process when you’re just starting out, so perhaps you can leave this until a bit later.

Domain name

The domain name is the most important thing to register first. Examples of domain names are:

mybusiness.com.au
mybusiness.com
mybusiness.biz

The domain name then gets used for everything else in future – your e-mail and website so it’s really important to figure this out first.

Generally speaking, if it ends with .com.au you need to re-register it every 2 years. If it ends with .com only then you normally re-register it on a yearly basis. Buying it once does not entitle to use it forever. In fact, if you do not renew and pay for the domain every term, you will lose ownership of it and someone else can buy it!

We can provide advice and ideas about what domain name to choose for your business, as well as organising the purchase of it for you – just contact us for more information.

E-mail

We think business e-mail is the second most important thing after your business card. If you use business e-mail ending in @yahoo.com.au, @bigpond.com, @hotmail.com or any of the other free e-mail services out there, you are sending a message to your prospective clients that is not professional.

Having a business e-mail instead of a free e-mail over the web means you can promote yourself professionally every time you send out a message to new or existing clients.

Many people discount the idea of business e-mail – ie having your business name after the @ symbol – like jane@janesaccounting.com.au or bob@nsw-mowing.com, because it’s too difficult to figure out or too expensive. This is absolutely not the case, and it is certainly very easy to set up.

Not only is it normally cheaper than business cards, it only takes about 10 minutes of your time to set up. You set it up once on your computer, and you probably don’t need to do anything again.