If you are setting up a website business, including setting up a blog, this article is for you and is here to help you to understand how to choose your website domain name and hosting company.

Paid for hosting or free hosting?

I would always recommend that you go for paid hosting and the reason for this is that you have more control over what you can and cannot do with you website pages and of course this is more professional.

A web hosting company that I use a lot is GoDaddy.com who are based in the USA and have a really great service where you can buy an all ready registered domain name. One of the benefits I have found with GoDaddy’s service is that they have a helpline which, even though I live in the UK, I have used a few times and it is sometimes very useful to be able to speak to someone in person in order to resolve an issue quickly and easily. There are not many web hosting companies that provide a free technical helpline like this.

If you buy an already registered domain name that is at least two-three years old, and if you are lucky it may already have visitors and a Google ranking, you will find it much easier to get onto page one of a Google search. Google tends to put “New” domain names on “hold”, just in case they have been set up as a spamming site, so a newly registered name will take much longer to be indexed and move up the page rankings.

So if you go to the GoDaddy.com website and go to the “Auctions” tab located at the top of this page you will be able to choose from hundreds of already registered website domain names. You can even get these for as little as $5!

So a suggestion, if you are setting up a website about let say “Phone Services” try putting this into GoDaddy’s “Keyword” box and change the “Keyword” “begins with” to “contains” and this will list all those sites containing your keywords. You could try entering one word at a time, so firstly try “Phone” and secondly, “Services” and see what comes up.

If you find a website domain name you like in this search, here is very useful Free tool called the Wayback Machine which will not only tell you how old this website domain name is, but also you can have a look at what it looks like by clicking on the historical pages.

The GoDaddy site will also tell you how many monthly visitors the site is presently receiving, although this is not as important as the age of the site.

The other check you can do for your potential domain name purchase is to check how many links are already pointing to it. Click here to get the free Link Popularity Check software and follow the instructions for this. What you will find is that you can very quickly enter this new domain name into this link checking software and with one click, you will see within seconds the links pointing to your chosen domain name from Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. This link information might give you an indication of the likely Google ranking it already has. For example, if there are 4-5 links under the Google column you might find this site has a Google Page rank of a one or two, of course this is not guaranteed.

The American franchise chain Subway has announced that it plans on opening 600 new stores across the UK.

This is both an opportunity for those who have lost their jobs and who might be looking for a new business venture in setting up a franchise and good news for the UK economy, as it will create up to 7,000 new jobs.

If you have been made redundant you might think about using your redundancy money (if you received any that is) to set up in business. A good opportunity in this is to set up a franchise, as you are setting up a business which is a known quantity and one that the market already recognises, which not only means a higher likelihood on making it a success, but also the banks would look on this type of business more favourably.

The profits of the company Amazon have risen in the quarter ended 31 December 2008 and were up by 9% over the same period of 2007.

It is good to see that some businesses are doing well, despite the turn-down. Whilst in the high street we see shops closing down and a high number of retail businesses seeing reduced profits or losses, this online business continues to work well.

This will continue to be the trend for the future, as we have seen more and more retail businesses reporting good returns from their online sales. Online sales tend on the whole to be cheaper than from high street stores, simply because of the lower overheads needed to run them.

For example, Amazon in the UK operates from one office together with four warehouses, so it is not burdened by huge retail rents and staffing costs that the likes of high street retail chains have. Amazon profits for the three months to December 2008 increased to $225 million (£158 million) from $207 million in the previous year (£145 million), giving them an total profit for the 12-months ended 31 December 2008 of around $1 billion (£700 million).

There is some good news today as the figures are released for December mortgage approvals.

Home loans have risen slightly from 27,000 in November 2008 to 31,000 in December 2008. There is still a long way to go, as this level of mortgage approval is still very much lower than in the same period for 2007. As a way to demonstrate the mortgage approvals for 2007 were 1,250,000, whereas for 2008 the total was less than half this figure at 519,000.

However, it is good to pick up on good news when it is reported, as good news can become infectious and help towards yet more good news and so on…

Last night I was watching a program about how Bill Gates made Microsoft one of the Worlds biggest companies and made him the richest man in the World up until recently.

One aspect that was discussed on this program was the threat that Google poses to Microsoft. Bill Gates seemed to be really nervous about the power of Google and how they are developing their site so that PC users no longer need to buy Microsoft products like Word, Excel and Power Point, etc, as these programs are held on Google’s servers.

Google’s GDrive is a step in the direction that makes Mr Gates Nervous and is an online storage option where Google servers have enough capacity to hold the entire contents of your hard drive. We are all familiar with having a C: drive and a D: drive, so how do you fancy having a G: drive too.

This new service from Google (thought to be launched in 2009) will allow you to access and update your information, including word documents and spreadsheets, your emails, your personal photos etc, just so long as your device has an internet connection. It could also mean that instead of your PC booting up from your hard drive (or your C: drive), it could be booting off the Google operating system.

By shifting pretty much the entire content of a user’s hard drive to Google’s servers, PC’s would become simpler and cheaper. These new devices would simply act as a portal to the web and perhaps we would just need a keyboard that interacts with our television set and nothing more, other than a “local” processor and some RAM memory to work on files locally.

This new form of computing has a new term, which is “cloud computing” on the basis that your information is sitting in “the cloud“.

Of course the benefits of this new system are numerous, one of which is having your data stored in another location or “the cloud”, so if your computer is stolen or if it crashes, then your data is “safe”. The second obvious benefit to businesses is the ability to share information with other users within your business as a large network, using the internet as the network connection.

One thing that you will have to consider is the security of the information held by Google; will you be happy for Google to hold all your data. What about security breaches? Google would have access to all your data files and all the information pertaining to your business! This information could be sitting anywhere in the world too – it might sit in the USA or perhaps in Indian, who knows where?

The only constraint on this service is the bandwidth you have with your Internet Service Provider (ISP), so as long as your service is a fast one then there should be no speed issues. Today the Internet and the connections to it are pretty reliable. However, there are still times when the Internet still goes down, only last week it was reported that Google’s servers in India were down.

In one of my businesses we have been cut-off from Internet connection due to faults on the line, usually a fault with BT. In this event, if all your data is stored remotely, you would not be able to access your files and work would grind to a halt! Is that how you would want your business to run?

Can you also imagine the law suits that would be flying around, should Google lose company data! This could prove to be an interesting dilemma trying to prove that the data was in fact sitting on Google’s servers when it was lost. This could be a lawyers mine field in the future and can you imagine a small business going up against the might of Google, should something go wrong.

As a business owner what do you think about the idea of the Google GDrive? Would you be prepared to trust your hard drive to Google? Please let me have your comments on this below…

Every cloud has a silver lining; as does every downside have its upside.

During this down-turn there will be many people that are made redundant, but this does not have to be the end and could lead you to better things – much better things, as this video demonstrates…

Starting a business in a downturn from the BBC

In the last recession back in the 1990′s, thousands lost their jobs back then too. I hope that this video will give you inspiration.

New web site at Pound To Euro with up to the minute prices on currencies and a handy calculator, the site has a good article base which is growing, there is also a free ebook on forex trading.

Latest videos and news updated daily.

Starting soon will be a online forex trading course once again completly free just reply to the email your interested or any other suggestions to improve the site.

Also coming soon Free ebooks on trading the forex.

Visit and support a great new developimg site.

Thanks.

The highlight of this week was a new president being sworn-in in America as the 44th American President Barack Obama, takes centre stage.

There is nothing like a change in power to make people feel better which is a bit like having a shot in the arm. Barack Obama has plenty to do in his new role having followed the office of probably one of the worst presidencies in history. They say that major depressions come every 75 years or so and this one has come at about the right time according to history, helped along with bad management of the largest economy in the world!.

UK is officially in recession

Back over in the UK where we are still stuck with our government we are now officially in recession due to having two consecutive negative growth quarters ending December 2008. Sterling came under more pressure too this week with most currencies falling away again. The Sterling to US dollar rate closed at just over $1.37, which represents a fall of over 7% this week and has fallen by just under 35% since the rate hit $2.11 back in August of 2007. The US Dollar is back to the rates we were seeing back in December of 2001.

The other currency that has fallen sharply is the Sterling Euro rate closing the week at just under €1.06, having recovered a small amount last week.

Oil price recovers

Despite gloomy news around the globe the oil price has recovered this week with Opec cutting production and as much as 1.55 million barrels per day in January. The priced closed up at $46.47, which is a rise of 27% in one week. So it will be interesting to see where the price of oil moves this week with cold weather on its way on the one hand and on the other hand “peace” is restored in the Middles East for the time being.

Rising job losses

This has also been another week of job losses and warnings of job cut-backs, with Microsoft announcing 5,000 cuts in its work force which is the first ever in its history of trading! Over in Germany chip-maker Qimonda has filed fro bankruptcy with the loss of 12,000 jobs around the world. Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel maker owned by Tata is to cut around 3,500 jobs with up to 2,500 of hose in the UK alone! But it is Spain that seems to be worst hit with their unemployment rate hitting 13.9% or 3.2 million jobless in the last quarter of 2008.

More trouble on the tech front!

Another first in this economic gloom as Samsung the South Korean chip-maker records its first ever quarterly loss. Samsung Electronics is the world’s biggest chip-maker and made a loss of 22.2 billion Won (£11.6 million), which is as a result of falling global demand as well as prices in memory chips and liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Japan’s electronics company Sony has also given out a profits warning along with other tech firms including Microsoft and Nokia.

If you want to read some good news for business in all this gloom the BBC have a great article on Why recession can be good time to start business

End of the week saw:
Stock exchanges:
FTSE 100: 4,052
DOW: 8,078
S&P: 831.95
Nikkei: 7,745

Currencies
UK Sterling £ to US Dollar $ 1.37210
UK Sterling £ to Euro € 1.05837
UK Sterling £ to Japanese Yen 121.637
UK Sterling £ to Aus $ 2.09337
US Dollar $ to Euro € 0.771464
US Dollar $ to Japanese Yen 88.6288

Commodities
Nymex Crude oil – $46.47
Gold – $895.80

The British pound is coming under pressure again on the currency markets as investors dump the pound in favour of currencies like the Euro and the US Dollar!

Sterling has dropped to the following rates:

One UK Pound will get you just $1.37 in the USA – this is great for the travelling American so they can come to visit our shops like we did when the rate hit over $2 to the Pound!

One UK Pound will get you €1.06 – which is not quite as low as it has been, but it is still very low and will likely give you a par exchange at the airports when you are travelling abroad.

One UK Pound will translate to Australian $2.10 – for those of you that are travelling further afield!

One UK pound gets Japnese Yen 121.77 – Which is not good for Japan exporting cars to the UK and this will put pressure on these car manfacturers!

From a business perspective this is good for companies that export to other countries and especially to the US and Europe, because our goods become so much cheap cheaper (up to 35% cheaper in the USA from the Sterling high last year) to those countries where we export.

However, where companies are heavily dependent upon imports, then where these come from within the Eurozone and from the USA, their costs will have risen sharply and of course could force them to either put up their prices or could force them out of business all together! Where prices are forced up, this could put pressure on inflation within the UK, which is the last thing we need right now!

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